The publications page probably took me the longest to make, as I’ve integrated a lot of fun MooTools stuff.  Basically there are now almost 200 publications in the system–previously it was woefully out of date–and there are different ways to browse (full details with link to Google Books preview if available, or covers only), and it’s just kind of snazzy.  I think so, anyway!

In other news, SCM Press has a pretty decent sale on some books of interest, ending on 30 Sept. 2009:

• The Theology of Money (paperback), by Philip Goodchild (special sale price £13.50)
• Transcendence and Phenomenology (paperback), eds. Peter M. Candler, Jr. and Conor Cunningham (special sale price: £28.00)
• Belief and Metaphysics (paperback), eds. Peter M. Candler, Jr. and Conor Cunningham (special sale price: £28.00)
• Tayloring Reformed Epistemology: Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga and the de jure Challenge to Christian Belief (paperback), by Deane-Peter Baker (special sale price: £9.50)
• Theology, Psychoanalysis and Trauma (paperback), by Marcus Pound (special sale price: £10.00)

The image you see above is the Highfield House where the Theology and Religious Studies Department and Centre of Theology and Philosophy reside.  But this is a very, very rare image — almost impossible to find.   It is so precious and legendary that Indiana Jones would definitely say that “it belongs in a museum!”  Some do not even believe such a photo exists.  Why?  Because of the blue sky backdrop, which is perhaps the most coveted aspect of any picture taken in Nottinghamshire. It’s become so incredibly desired that even the University of Nottingham promotional videos will mask out the existing sky and replace it with a fake, glowing, blue sky.

Before, when I took a picture of the building and showed it to a few people in the department, the first reaction was: “Do you have one with a blue sky?”  No.  Not until yesterday morning when I brought my camera to campus and happened to snap off a few pictures of the façade. And then, as if on cue, the skies clouded over an hour later and remained that way for the remainder of the day.  And it looked like this.

So I will leave it up to you to provide a caption!

[And just to provide a brief update, we may have 4 or 5 of the sessions posted in a week or two online.  Video editing and rendering takes way longer than I thought.  Apparently all the capturing has to be done in real time so I have to watch through all of these sessions again.  I guess there's no fast-forward button on that part.  I spent 8 hours in the studio today just to get 4 videos done, dang.]

This January on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog, we hope to have a symposium on Nate’s book.  More on that later as we are still working out people to engage the book!

Meanwhile, this book is up on the MIT Press website now: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?  It’s a conversation between Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank (ed. Creston Davis).  [via]

The programmes for the Grandeur of Reason conference have been printed as of yesterday.  I have to continue writing my paper so that page 10 won’t be tellin’ lies.  More later!

If you attended the Radical Orthodoxy and Process Theology panel at the 2007 AAR in San Diego, one of the interesting commonalities between the two sensibilities was an embrace of a return to metaphysics.  In 2006, the Centre of Theology and Philosophy hosted a conference called ‘Belief and Metaphysics’ (CoTP report here) around this issue (although not related to process) and subsequently published a collection of essays from the conference by the same title.

At this year’s AAR in Chicago, Nate Kerr is moderating a panel on the recently-released Belief and Metaphysics volume in the Veritas series entitled “The Return of Metaphysics: A dialogue on the occasion of the publication of Belief and Metaphysics.”  The panel is graciously sponsored by SCM Press‘ Veritas Series and The Centre of Theology and Philosophy.  Click on the poster above to see the larger version which lists all the details for the event, including the list of panelists.  If you received your AAR book in the mail this past week, you will also find these details listed on page 151. It looks to be a pretty exciting panel!

Regrettably, chances are very likely that I will not be able to attend the AAR this year because of our upcoming move to Nottingham in the fall.  We have a bit too much going on and not enough money to fly everywhere and attend everything.  However, I will be going to and presenting at this, which will be much easier to get to from Nottingham.  Still, if you can make it to the AAR, I highly encourage attendance at this this panel.  It looks to be quite interesting and a lot of fun with a good diverse response to the book.  The book itself is very diverse so we’ll see what happens!

This is the upcoming Centre of Theology and Philosophy conference called The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism. I’ve put in a lot of work into making this conference page so let me know what you think! (special nod to Mootools for creating such a nice javascript framework!)

Also, if you’re interested in attending, we are now accepting reservations for the conference as well as paper abstracts for panels. All the information you need is on the site.

Going to the AAR this year?  Then please join us!

There is a forthcoming volume of essays entitled Transcendence and Phenomenology, edited by Pete Candler and Conor Cunningham.  We just received all the blurbs for this volume, and they are quite an exciting bunch, especially considering the topic.  There are blurbs from Paul Cardinal Poupard, Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, Rudolf Bernet, Anthony J. Steinbock, James G. Hart, and Dermot Moran.  Click here to check them out.