THE SECOND ANNUAL
BRANIFF CONFERENCE IN THE LIBERAL ARTS
ON PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY
JANUARY 29TH–30TH, 2016
THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS
IRVING, TEXAS
PRESENTED BY
THE BRANIFF GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION
WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICS,
AND THE DEAN OF THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL
The Braniff Graduate Student Association is proud to present the second annual Braniff Conference in the
Liberal Arts. The Braniff Graduate Student Association was established to further the interests of the
student body of the Braniff School of Liberal Arts. The Braniff School includes M.A. programs in Art,
American Studies, Classics, English, Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, and Theology, and,
through the Institute of Philosophic Studies, Ph.D. programs in Literature, Politics, and Philosophy. These
programs are united by their dedication to renewing the Western heritage of liberal education and the
Christian intellectual tradition.
The Braniff Conference in the Liberal Arts is made possible by the support of Braniff graduate students. The
BGSA would like to recognize Gregory Roper, chair of the Department of English; Richard Dougherty, chair
of the Department of Politics; and Joshua Parens, Dean of the Braniff Graduate School, for their generous
support. The 2015–2016 BGSA is: John Rhett Forman (President); Angela Lill (Secretary); Amy Freeman
(Treasurer) Anna Dean (Treasurer); James DeMasi, Melissa Dow, Tyrel Garrett, Dolan Kay, Natalie Smith,
and Rick Tucker (Senators).
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29TH
LOCATION: LYNCH AUDITORIUM
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
6:00–6:45 P.M.
RHETT FORMAN
Institute of Philosophic Studies: Literature, University of Dallas
GREGORY ROPER
Department of English, University of Dallas
JONATHAN CULP
Department of Politics, University of Dallas
POETRY READING
7:00–7:45 P.M.
Master of Ceremonies:
NATALIE SMITH
Institute of Philosophic Studies: Politics, University of Dallas
IMAGINE DALLAS is a nonprofit corporation publishing literary writing and providing free educational poetry
programs to students and the general public in Dallas County. It distributes literary publications in centers
of living local culture and partners with libraries and schools to deliver educational programs. Imagine
Dallas also supports a distributed network of poets inviting communities to engage the living lyric tradition.
You can support Imagine Dallas by buying a copy of their magazine, Grub Street Grackle, or by attending
one of the public poetry readings they sponsor.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 30TH
LOCATION: UPSTAIRS HAGGAR
REGISTRATION
8:30–9:00 A.M.
Continental breakfast will be available.
PANEL 1: THE PREMODERN APPROACH
9:00–10:35 A.M.
Moderator: FRED ERDMAN, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Philosophy, University of Dallas
Hephaestus’s Net: Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium
DEREK DUPLESSIE, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University
Response: JOSHUA PARENS, Department of Philosophy, University of Dallas
The Myth of Er as Complement to Dialectic
PETER MOORE, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky
Response: PAVLOS PAPADOPOULOS, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Politics, University of Dallas
On Poetic Knowledge as Underlying Philosophy
MICHAEL J. BOLIN, Department of Philosophy, Wyoming Catholic College
Response: PHILIP SOLÓRZANO, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Philosophy, University of Dallas
PANEL 2: EARLY MODERNISM
10:45–11:55 P.M.
Moderator: ANGELA LILL, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Politics, University of Dallas
Desire, Perception, and Self-Knowledge in the Chastity Legend of Spenser’s Faerie Queene
BRANDON MURI, Department of English, Grand Valley State University
Response: AMY FREEMAN, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Literature, University of Dallas
First to Himself He Inward Silence Broke: Adam’s Dialectical Contemplation in Paradise Lost
APARNA RAVILOCHAN, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Response: LETA SUNDET, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Literature, University of Dallas
LUNCH
12:00–1:15 P.M.
PANEL 3: ROMANTICISM
1:20–2:20 P.M.
Moderator: RACHEL BYRD, Braniff Graduate School: English, University of Dallas
Novalis and Hymns to the Night
JINGJING ZHAO, Department of English, University of Auckland
The Poetics of American Common Law
JAKE CRABBS, John Marshall Law School
Response: COLE SIMMONS, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Politics, University of Dallas
PANEL 4: PLATO AND THE POETS
2:30–3:30 P.M.
Moderator: JAMES DEMASI, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Literature, University of Dallas
Plundering the Cave: The Influence of Plato’s Republic on Coleridge’s Biographia
STEPHEN BARNES, Department of English, University of Mary Hardin–Baylor
Between germs and soap bubbles: Ezra Pound’s phantastikón in “Psychology and Troubadours”
ELOISSA BRESSAN, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Aix-Marseille
Response: FR. STEPHEN GREGG, Institute of Philosophic Studies: Literature, University of Dallas
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
4:00–5:15 P.M.
RON SMITH
Poet Laureate of Virginia
PARTICIPANTS
MICHAEL BOLIN studied liberal arts at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and pursued graduate studies
in philosophy at the University of Dallas. Since 2009, he has taught undergraduate philosophy and various
interdisciplinary courses in mathematics, natural science, and theology at Wyoming Catholic College,
where he is currently assistant professor of philosophy.
STEPHEN BARNES is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor (UMHB) in
Belton, Texas. He is a graduate of the University of Dallas’s Institute of Philosophic Studies (Literature
2006). During the 2008-09 academic year, Barnes was a Fulbright Scholar at Daugavpils University in the
Republic of Latvia. His research interests and publications include articles on the works of Frost,
Dostoevsky, Faulkner, and Wendell Berry, among others.
ELOISA BRESSAN graduated with a BA in Classical Literature and an MA in Modern Philology from the
University of Padua, Italy. She has been a doctoral student and instructor in Comparative Literature at the
University of Aix-Marseille, France, with a research focus on Provence in The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Eloisa is
a contributor to Make It New, the magazine of the Ezra Pound Society. Her publications include “Reading A
Walking Tour in Southern France: A geographical approach” (Make It New, 2.1, June 2015) and “Le vortex
gréco-provençal dans Les Cantos d’Ezra Pound” (Loxias, 46, August 2014).
JAKE CRABBS is a third year law student at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois. He has been a
participant in the John Marshall Restorative Justice Clinic and is currently an extern for Judge Sanjay Tailor
of the Circuit Court of Cook County. After he received his Bachelors Degree in the Liberal Arts from St.
John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland, he taught English for two years at the Jeongsang Language School
in Seoul, Korea.
JONATHAN CULP received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from St John’s College, Annapolis and his Ph.D. in Political
Science from Boston College. He is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas and also the
director of the undergraduate International Studies minor. His research focuses on the relationship
between the virtue of justice and the human good in Plato’s Republic, a subject on which he is currently
writing a book, and he has also published an article on David Hume's treatment of the same question.
DEREK DUPLESSIE received his B.A. from St. John’s College (Santa Fe) in 2011, and is currently pursuing a
Ph.D. in Philosophy at Tulane University. He is the 2015-2016 graduate fellow at the Murphy Institute and
teaches courses in the history of philosophy at Tulane as a graduate instructor. His interests include Greek
philosophy and poetry, political philosophy, and history of modern philosophy.
RHETT FORMAN is a PhD Literature student in the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas.
He earned his BA at St. John’s College and has also studied at the University of Costa Rica and at the Ezra
Pound Center for Literature in Dorf Tirol, Italy. He is Series Editor for Make It New, the magazine of the
Ezra Pound Society. His research interests include Modernist poetry and liberty in the epic.
AMY FREEMAN is a third year doctoral student in Literature at the Institute of Philosophic Studies, University
of Dallas. She holds a B.A. in University Scholars from Baylor University. Her research gravitates toward
medieval Western literature and spirituality, including the Rule of St. Benedict, Boethius's Consolation of
Philosophy, and the works of Walter Hilton.
FR. STEPHEN ANDREW GREGG, O.CIST., is a doctoral student in Literature in the Institute of Philosophic
Studies. He earned a B.A. from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, majoring in Latin and in
Mediaeval Studies. After entering the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas, he studied philosophy and
theology at the University of Dallas, completing the S.T.B. at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in
Rome and a License in Patristic Theology and Sciences at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, also
in Rome. He teaches in the English Department of the University of Dallas, and teaches English and other
subjects at the Cistercian Preparatory School.
JOHN DOUGLAS MACREADY is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. His
work focuses on critical issues in social and political philosophy with specific attention paid to human
dignity as it relates to larger human rights issues such as statelessness, racism, genocide, and mass
incarceration. His dissertation, “A Fragile Nobility: Hannah Arendt and the Political Meaning of Human
Dignity” excavates the principle of conditionality from Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy in order to
elucidate her understanding of human dignity. He has published book reviews and articles in Borderlands,
Film-Philosophy, Purlieu: A Philosophical Journal, and Ramify: The Journal of the Braniff Graduate School,
and contributed chapters to Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and A Companion to Woody Allen (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
PETER MOORE is currently a fifth year doctoral student at the University of Kentucky. His main area of
research is ancient Greek philosophy, with a focus on Plato. Peter has studied Modern Greek language and
literature both at the University of Athens and at Boston University.
BRANDON MURI is an award-winning journalist and former high school Latin instructor from the state of
Michigan. Brandon received his bachelor’s degree from Hillsdale College and a Master of Arts degree in
literature from Grand Valley State University. His thesis on Edmund Spenser grew from an interest in the
signifying power of allegory that began with an Ahab-like obsession with Herman Melville as an
undergraduate. He is currently applying to doctoral programs with an eye to continuing his research in
Spenserian allegory.
PAVLOS PAPADOPOULOS is a doctoral candidate in Political Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophic Studies,
University of Dallas, where he teaches in the Philosophy Department. He holds an M.A. in Politics from the
University of Dallas and a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Annapolis. Pavlos has served as an
editor of Ramify: The Journal of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts. His research interests include
classical political philosophy, the theoretical and practical conception of authorship in the history of
philosophy, and the history, theory, and practice of liberal education.
JOSHUA PARENS is Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Institute of Philosophic Studies, and Dean of the
Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Maimonides and
Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature, and of two books on Alfarabi: An Islamic Philosophy of
Virtuous Religion: Introducing Alfarabi and Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi’s “Summary of Plato’s Laws.”
With Joseph C. Macfarland, he is the editor of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook. His expertise
includes Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy, early modern philosophy, metaphysics, political
philosophy, and Spinoza.
APARNA RAVILOCHAN is a second-year PhD student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social
Thought. She received her bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe in 2012 and a
Fulbright award to work as an English teaching assistant in Malaysia in 2013. She currently works on
Aristotle, ancient science, and the history and philosophy of math and science.
COLE SIMMONS is a doctoral candidate in Political Philosophy at the University of Dallas, where he teaches
in the Politics Department. He holds an M.A. in Politics from the University of Dallas and a B.A. in Liberal
Arts from St. John’s College, Annapolis. He is a current Rumsfeld Fellow.
RON SMITH is the Poet Laureate of Virginia. He is the author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery,
runner-up for the National Poetry Series Open Competition and the Samuel French Morse Prize, and
subsequently published by University Presses of Florida. His other books—Its Ghostly Workshop, Moon
Road: Poems 1986-2005, and the forthcoming The Humility of the Brutes—are published by LSU Press. His
poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The Nation, New England Review, Southern Review,
Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, and in anthologies in the US, Italy, Canada, and the UK.
Smith holds degrees (B.A., M.A., M.H., M.F.A.) in philosophy, English, general humanities, and creative
writing and has studied writing at Bennington College in Vermont, British drama at Oxford, and
Renaissance and modern culture at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Merano, Italy. He is a winner of
and now Curator of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize. He has taught at several universities and is currently
the Writer-in-Residence and the George O. Squires Chair of Distinguished Teaching at St. Christopher's
School, in Richmond, Virginia. He is also Poetry Editor for Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature.
PHILIP SOLÓRZANO is a doctoral student in Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophic Studies, University of
Dallas. He graduated with a BA from Thomas Aquinas College.
LETA SUNDET is a graduate student in Literature at the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of
Dallas, where she teaches in the English department. She received her M.A. in Theology and Letters and her
B.A. in Liberal Arts from New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, ID. Her current research interests include
Jane Austen and Isak Dinesen.
JINGJING ZHAO is a third-year PhD student in English at Auckland University, New Zealand. Originally from
China, Jingjing earned a master's degree in Theology, Literature and Arts from Glasgow University. In the
spring of 2016 Jingjing will be an exchange scholar at Ohio State University.