2027 Veritas Conference
2027 Providence College Veritas Conference
What is Man, That Thou Art Mindful of Him?
Christian Humanism and Its Rivals
Spring Conference | April 9–10, 2027 | Providence College
The Providence College Humanities Program invites you to its fourth annual Veritas Conference. Keynote speakers include Mary Harrington (Unherd), Bradley J. Birzer (Hillsdale College), Sr. Carino Hodder, OP (Dominican Sisters of St. Joseph), Jonathan Ciraulo (Catholic University of America), and Michael Legaspi (St. Vladimir Theological Seminary).
About the Conference
What does it mean to be human? The question is perennial, but presses with special urgency during periods of crisis. In twentieth-century Europe, for example, the decades leading up to and following immediately upon the Second World War witnessed a remarkable floruit of Christian reflection on this question. What are the bases of moral values and political institutions, and how can they be justified? Are such artifacts of human culture as literature and music really and ultimately worthwhile? What should be handed on in education to the next generation? Christians as varied as Jaques Maritain and Henri de Lubac, Karl Barth and C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden – to name only a few – attempted to respond to such questions with a renewed, Christian sense of the human place in the cosmos.
Perhaps we are well on our way into another such period of crisis. In a world where much of human cultural making appears capable of being automated – where human hands are not needed to manufacture textiles or tools – and where the AI tools themselves can produce music, novels and essays on Shakespeare – what are we humans for? What does it mean to be human now? In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XVI has raised these questions and offered helpful guidelines for responding to them. He also recently invited Catholic universities to “form pioneers of a new humanism in the context of the digital revolution.” What form should such a Christian humanism take given the crisis of our age? In what ways will it build on earlier approaches, and what new challenges does it face? Ultimately, what questions should we be asking now regarding the human place in the cosmos – and what resources for answering them are supplied by the Christian tradition – especially, by the Catholic and Dominican tradition? These and similar questions are the proposed topic for the Humanities Program’s fifth Annual Veritas Conference (2027).
For questions or inquiries about the conference, email veritas.conference@providence.edu.
Call for Papers
The Humanities Program invites abstracts that engage the themes of human identity, the goodness of the humane arts (music, literature, art, etc.), the role and future of education in forming human beings, and the intersection between these themes and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. In the humane spirit of the Veritas Conference, we welcome abstracts from a variety of points of departure, including theology, philosophy, political theory, law, history, economics, and the social sciences, as well as the natural sciences, literature, and the arts.
Please send title, abstract of no more than 300 words and an accompanying CV to veritas.conference@providence.edu. Abstracts due by February 1, 2027.
Our Keynote Speakers
Mary Harrington
Ms. Harrington is a public intellectual and contributing editor at UnHerd. Her first book was Feminism Against Progress (2023), and her upcoming book is The King and the Swarm: Politics After the Singularity (2027). She writes a Substack (Reactionary Feminist) and tweets at @moveincircles.
Bradley J. Birzer
Dr. Bradley Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History at Hillsdale College, and he is co-founder of and contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. He has written numerous books, including Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of the West (2026), and Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West (2019). He tweets as @bradleybirzer.
Carino Hodder, OP
Sr. Hodder is a Dominican Sister of St. Joseph based in the New Forest, England. She is a convert to Christianity from atheism, and she is the author of The Dignity of Woman in the Modern World (2025). She has written for magazines such as The Lamp and The Plough, and she can be found on Substack.
Jonathan Ciraulo
Dr. Ciraulo is an Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America. His books include Distributed Like Bread: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Discernment, Vocation, and the Priesthood (2026) and The Eucharistic Form of God: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Sacramental Theology (2022). He is editor of Word on Fire’s academic journal, The New Ressourcement.
Michael Legaspi
Dr. Legaspi is an Associate Professor of Old Testament at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. His books include a new commentary on the Book of Job (2026), Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition (2018), and The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (2010).
Full schedule and additional information coming soon. Please send any questions to veritas.conference@providence.edu.
For information on our previous conferences, click on the links below.
