Upcoming Events
Public Lecture – Ratzinger Studies: Today and Beyond
APECSS – Annual Conference, 2025
Home conference: Family. Place. Economics.
“Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, ‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
“the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.” – G. K. Chesterton
The place of home in our society and culture deserves critical examination. On the one hand our culture is replete with idealised, and perhaps clichéd, notions of home, on the other—particularly in an age of increasing globalism, competition, and crisis—it can often appear that homes and homelife are considered last on the list of priorities, if they are considered at all.
The disruptions caused by COVID and the new ways people were expected to use their homes has afforded us with a convenient excuse to open a discussion on home. This being the case, The Dawson Society is pleased to announce the theme of our second major conference, “HOME: Family. Place. Economics.” In doing so we are deliberately cultivating a broad approach to the idea of home from the architecture of the dwellings that shelter us, to the social structures and economies that support (or disrupt) homelife, from home as a family unit, to home as a country and place.
The conference will be held from 10-12 July, 2025 in Perth, Western Australia
Papers on the following topics and others are welcome:
- Home economics. Working from home.
- Faith and/in the home.
- Place: theories and practices of place. Mobility, transport, and connectedness to place.
- Christianity, pilgrimage, and the heavenly homeland.
- Marriage, family life; homemaking, home cooking.
- Being at home in one’s body: gender, gender roles, and embodied persons.
- Care for our common home: Environment and home.
- The front porch; home within a community of homes.
- The city, and the suburb; Architecture and city planning.
- The homestead. Agrarianism/back to the land movement.
- Homelessness, and loneliness.
- Colonial and post-colonial conceptions of homeland.
- Indigenous/non-European conceptions of home.
- Nationality and home.
- Old and new worlds; Migration and home.
- Capitalism and home.
- Literary and artistic representations of the home.
- Illness, old age, and the home as a place of care.
- Mother tongue/s – the language of the home.
Criteria and Deadlines for Papers
We invite submissions from persons interested in critically addressing any theme related to “home”. Speakers should identify understandings and ideals of home and societal forces that shape home. All papers should, at some level, assess how their approach to their chosen topic might interact with the Christian claim.
Total time allocation for each paper will be 30 minutes which must include time for audience questions and responses. Proceedings will be recorded and posted on the internet, and published in 2025/6.
Abstract proposals of between 100-300 words should be sent to Dr Tom Gourlay, The Dawson Society for Philosophy & Culture Inc. via email: thomas@dawsonsociety.com.au by 31 March 2025 at the latest.
Divine Mercy Moments (UNDA Chaplaincy)
One of our Guild members, Adrian Brown, is organising a Divine Mercy group, which runs on every Tuesday from 3-4pm in the UNDA Chaplaincy space (Broadway).
They start with the Divine Mercy chaplet then work their way through the Divine Mercy Bible with its “Divine Mercy Moments” (which are comments on certain texts). They then end with further prayers.
They are presently working their way through Genisis and would be most happy to have new members and input. Just turn up if you are interested!
Previous Events
Conference on the Council of Nicaea
Catholic Scholars Guild – 2025 Opening Mass
Dear Guild members and friends of the Guild,
Please save the date for our Opening Mass for 2025. The Mass will be celebrated at St Benedict’s, Broadway at 6:00pm on Thursday FEBRUARY 13, 2025. Mass will be followed by dinner at a local restaurant. More details to come soon.
Priests of the Guild, please let us know if you plan to celebrate so we can prepare well!
CONFERENCE: Shepherd at the Crossroads: Converging Traditions in Early Christianity
The Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition at Campion College is delighted to announce an upcoming symposium, “Shepherd at the Crossroads: Converging Traditions in Early Christianity,” to be held on September 27-28, 2024, at the college campus in Toongabbie, Western Sydney.
From its earliest days, Christianity has had a cosmopolitan spirit. Christ Himself was born into a Hellenised Kingdom of Judaea, at that time under the yoke of the Caesars. Assisted by the congregations of the Jewish Diaspora, the Word quickly took root around the Near East and Mediterranean, bringing Christians in contact with innumerable gods, languages, and traditions of thought. The Lord spoke to these cultures, and they responded, each with their own instinctive modes of worship and something to offer the emerging Christian civilisation. The world of Alexander, Cicero and Augustus did not die with the conversion of Constantine but was gradually reorganised in the image of Christ. This amalgamation of the Christian and pre-Christian abounds in Late Antiquity and has been with us ever since – in our languages, literature, images, music, architecture, and institutions.
This event is open to academics, tertiary students, and the wider community, offering a unique opportunity to delve into the multicultural and multi-traditional character of Early Christianity and its enduring influence. We look forward to seeing you on campus.
For Conference information, including event photos and recordings of the presentations, click HERE.
Research Seminar
DATE: 1:30-2:30pm (SYDNEY) August 30, 2024
Presenter: Dr Mario Baghos
Might Unassailable? Walls, Gates, and the Marble King of Byzantine Constantinople
Abstract: The walls surrounding the city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire for over a thousand years, were built by the emperor Theodosius II the Younger in the fifth century AD. While fulfilling the practical purpose of extending the city’s boundaries and keeping enemies at bay, the walls were also endowed with symbolic significance. This is because Constantinople was seen as a sacred space that was distinct from the profane space outside its walls. This presentation will explore how the transition from the profane to the sacred was marked on the lintels of gates into the city with crosses, christograms and the ΙΧ monogram. Nowhere is this best seen than in the Golden Gate reserved for the emperor and his entourage, built most likely by Theodosius II. Marked with Christ’s name, the gate also displayed political images of empire—quadrigas, Tyches and winged Victories (Nikes)—along with mythological scenes depicting Hercules and Prometheus, again pointing to attempts by the Byzantines to preserve the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. But perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Golden Gate has been its permanent association with the last emperor of Byzantium, Constantine XI Palaiologos, who according to Greek folklore was said to have been transformed into marble and buried at its base, one day to return to reclaim the city. This paper will assess not only the symbolic significance of the motifs associated with the walls and gates of the city, but their persistence to this day in certain milieus in spite of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople on May 29th 1453 and its modern iteration as Istanbul, the largest city in the Republic of Turkey.
Email heath.williams@nd.edu.au for ZOOM details.
Australian Catholic Historical Society – Talk
DATE: August 18, 2024
The decline of Australian Catholic intellectual life
By Gerard Windsor
Novelist, essayist and reviewer, author of The Tempest-Tossed Church
Note, all Society talks are on Sunday afternoons at 2.00pm (unless otherwise stated) in the Crypt of St Patrick’s at Church Hill [Grosvenor Street], The Rocks. Members and non-members are welcome to join us in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Attendance is free but a gold coin donation for afternoon tea is welcome.
For more information, see the Society website.
