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Save the Date!
2025 North American Section Conference
May 9-12, 2025 / San Francisco
In September 2024 the Literary Arts and Humanities Section in North America of the School for Spiritual Science sponsored an eight-day Section Conference that anchored itself in two North American cities: San Francisco and Toronto. Between these two events in San Francisco and Toronto, a dedicated group of conference participants made a multi-day literary field trip to Big Sur in Northern California where we visited poet Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House and Hawk Tower in Carmel and the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. In Carmel we were hosted by the Tor House Foundation Director, poet Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts.
What are the presiding spirits of our North American landscapes and how do they inform our varied literatures? How does landscape inform poetry and literature? How do climate and geography—elementals and weather—the interplay of sunlight and ocean wave—grassland and redwood—animal and human being—nourish a poetic ecology? What are our North American stories and poems that are spoken from these spirits of place? Attendance was high at both the San Francisco and Toronto campuses, with a total of about 150 people participating overall during the several days. Day One Keynote Lectures are available on the Section website by clicking this sentence.
Save the Date!
2025 North American Section Conference
May 9-12, 2025 / San Francisco
The North American Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities of the School for Spiritual Science has scheduled a second follow-up conference in San Francisco for May 9-12, 2025. Once again, Christiane Haid will join us.
Details will soon be available on the website TheLiteraryArts.com.
This second conference in May 2025 will deepen themes and conversations begun in 2024. Registration is planned to begin in the month of February. Registration will be limited and may close quickly. You are warmly invited!
Conference Themes & Topics
These are conference themes that have arisen from our ongoing years-long meetings in Fair Oaks. Section friends and members will return to these themes and deepen our work with them at the second conference in May 2025.
• The significance of Novalis for the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities and for the School for Spiritual Science.
• What is “poetic intelligence” and how does the work of our Section align with Rudolf Steiner’s vision for the School for Spiritual Science?
• What spirits live uniquely in North American literatures and languages? What is the unique character of anthroposophy on the Pacific Rim?
• Does the practice and study of literature build a bridge between the living and the dead?
• “Beauty, Truth, and Goodness” / Presiding Goddesses for the Literary Arts and Humanities?
• How does an ongoing daily contemplative / meditative praxis change one’s relationship to the Word and to Literature and to one’s work within the disciplines of the humanities and liberal arts?
• Can the study and practice of literature and a spiritual-scientific engagement with the secular humanist liberal arts foster and support what it means to be fully human in respect to the crises and challenges of our 21st century?
Intersectional Artistic Offerings!
Visual art, drama, musical performances, fairytale recitation, readings of original poetry by North American Section poets, and two full eurythmy performances of the Michael Imagination by San Francisco Bay Area eurythmists added to the richness of the event in 2024. The Conference in 2025 will have a similar artistic depth. Participants at the San Francisco campus in 2024 had the option of touring the Legion of Honor Art Museum, while in Toronto the pre-conference kickoff included a visit to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Museum to view artwork of the Group of Seven with colleagues from the Visual Arts Section and members of the Section Leadership Group from Canada.
Adding to the richness, the eight-day conference concluded in Toronto with a performance of a dramatic reading of the play Fire in the Temple by playwright/actor Glen Williamson. Actress Laurie Portocarrero joined Glen for this dramatic reading, which provided a splendid capstone to the eight-day conference.
Those lecturing during the 2024 conference were: Christiane Haid (Goetheanum), Daniel Polikoff (USA), Philip Thatcher (Canada), Arie van Amerigen (Canada), Mary Stewart Adams (USA), Clifford Venho (USA), Gayle Davis (USA), Glen Williamson (USA), and Bruce Donehower (USA). Virtuoso violinist Emmanuel Vukovich (Canada) hosted a discussion and performed the Bartok Solo Violin Sonata at the Toronto Campus.
Emmanuel will join us again for the 2025 Conference in San Francisco, where he will present a solo recital followed by a collaborative presentation (music and poetry) of Hymns to the Night by Novalis in a fresh English language translation for our 21st century. An art exhibit at a dedicated gallery in Sausalito along with a poetry night and social time are among some of the planned artistic offerings. Small group discussions will occur. Keep an eye on the website for more details and registration information. Conference registration will be limited.
A book with the title “Celebrating the Mountain” was prepared especially for the opening of the 2024 Conference. This book introduced persons new to our Section work in North America to some of the Section’s ongoing research themes and concerns, and it celebrated Section poetry and literary essays. The book contains poems by Section poets along with an important essay by Section leader Christiane Haid with the title “The Dawn of the Beautiful.”
Preview or Purchase the 2024 Conference Book “Celebrating the Mountain” by clicking this sentence.
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book Cover: “Walking with Mountains” by Marion Donehower (Visual Arts Section)
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