IUPUC faculty member Lisa Siefker Bailey, Ph.D., recently presented a paper at the 29th annual Christian Scholars’ Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

Siefker Bailey presented her paper, “The Return of Jack: The Spiraling Roles of the Prodigal,” during a panel session centered around Marilynne Robinson’s book Home. Home is a companion novel that revisits characters from Robinson’s Gilead which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

More than 400 scholars attended the conference held at Lipscomb University. The theme was “The Power of Narrative.” Speakers included Billy Collins, Marilynne Robinson, Hubert G. Locke, and Barbara Brown Taylor.  The goal of the conference was to stimulate dialogue on the intersection of faith, academics, and narrative's captivating quality by bringing together fellow academics for collaboration and dialogue.

“I greatly enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of the conference.  Never have I experienced such deep and broad intellectually stimulating conversations across academic disciplines, from history to theology to art to music and back around to English,” Siefker Bailey said. “I am eager to implement ideas I’ve brought back from the conference into my teaching.”

Siefker Bailey is an English lecturer for the Division of Liberal Arts at IUPUC.