Lewis and Women

Have you ever wondered how Lewis really viewed women?   One of the main objectives of this breakout session is to explore the characteristics of the variety of women that Lewis creates in his Chronicles of Narnia, the Space Trilogy, and in his own relationship with his wife, Joy, and other key women in his life.  Lewis was famous for showing us that real life is complex, and one of my goals in this session is to discuss and interact with Lewis’s views and attitudes towards his fictional women and the real women in his life.

Lewis and Science Fiction

C.S. Lewis wrote that science fiction writers must create a world that is totally believable; thus, it is a form that is more demanding than other forms of fiction.  In this break out session, we will use creative forms of media to examine and discuss Lewis’s chief concerns about personality, scientism, tyranny, freedom, collectivism and the Christian’s role in the modern world.  We will focus on the significance of various life forms in Out of a Silent Planet, the return to Eden and the entrance of evil in Perelandra, and the very current issues of scientism, freedom, marriage, myth, collectivism, tyranny and the beauty of Christian community in That Hideous Strength.

Bio

Lisa is a native Southern Californian, and she has spent much of her life in the greater San Diego area.  As an undergraduate student, she migrated to Wheaton, Illinois, to study and earn her B.A. from Wheaton College.  One of the unusual reasons Lisa went to Wheaton was because of its proximity to Chicago, a city she didn’t know, but she soon grew to love.   The city of Chicago gave Lisa a great platform upon which to build her career and passion for teaching at the community college.  Upon graduation, she returned to San Diego to earn an M.A. in English from the University of San Diego.  Now, Lisa is a Professor of English at Grossmont College, and she loves teaching the wide variety of courses that Grossmont provides her. In 2008 and 2011, she presented papers at the C.S. Lewis Summer Institutes held at Oxford and Cambridge.   Her paper entitled, “Love and Knowledge: The Keys to Being All That We Are Intended to Be” was published in the C.S. Lewis Foundation online journal The Pursuit of Truth in 2011. In addition, Lisa has worked with the C.S. Lewis Foundation, served as the President of the Board of Trustees for Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado, and most recently, she served as the President for the Greater San Diego Council of Teachers of English.  In the tradition of living the legacy, Lisa and her husband, Chris, host a monthly “Reading with Lewis” book club, and Lisa continues to research and write about the influence of the Huguenots on the West and the world.

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