HOUSTON, Oct. 4, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- What is beauty? How does it engage and move the soul? What happens in its absence? During The Soul of Beauty, a public conference to be held at Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church, Nov. 3-4, 2006, participants will explore the ways we perceive and respond to beauty -- as well as the ways it changes us.
The ninth collaboration between The Honors College at the University of Houston and The Jung Center of Houston, this conference will begin at 7:30 pm on Friday with a panel presentation by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, celebrated nature writer Barbara Hurd, and Jungian analyst Ronald Schenk. KUHF 88.7 FM will co-sponsor the conference, and KUHF's Dean Dalton will moderate the keynote panel. For the first year, Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1900 Bering Drive, is also sponsoring this event.
The conference will continue Saturday at 9 am, with three individual presentations by the speakers, followed by a panel discussion with participants. The conference will conclude at 1:15 pm.
Registration for this conference is $50, $40 for members of The Jung Center, and free to faculty, staff, and students of all campuses in the UH system. For more information, visit The Jung Center's website at www.junghouston.org, to download a conference brochure and register for the event.
Stephen Dunn is the author of fourteen collections of poems, including the recently released Everything Else in the World. His Different Hours was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Among his many other accolades are an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.
Barbara Hurd is the author of four books, including Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark and Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001. She is the recipient of a 2002 NEA Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, winner of the Sierra Club's National Nature Writing Award and a 2004 Pushcart Prize.
Ronald Schenk, PhD, is a Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in Dallas and Houston. The current president of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, Schenk is the author of three books, including DarkLight: The Appearance of Death in Everyday Life and The Soul of Beauty: A Psychological Investigation of Appearance.
Previous conferences in this annual series have brought innovative scholars and psychoanalysts together with participants from the greater Houston community to explore such topics as psychology and the movies, violence and division in America, and the power of the personal story. Speakers have included religious scholars Huston Smith and Wendy Doniger, psychoanalysts John Beebe and Lyn Cowan, UH law professor David Dow, sociologist William Martin, and many others.
The Honors College is one of the largest and most developed honors programs in the nation. For the 300 students who join the college each fall, The Honors College offers all the advantages of an outstanding liberal arts and science college without asking students to sacrifice the wealth of resources and rich diversity of a large university. To learn more about The Honors College, visit the University of Houston website at www.uh.edu or call the college at 713.743.9010.
Nestled in the heart of Houston's Museum District, The Jung Center is a non-profit continuing education institute that offers over 200 courses, lectures, and workshops each year. The Center's offerings encourage the development of greater self-awareness, creative expression, and psychological insight. For more information about The Jung Center, visit www.junghouston.org or call 713.524.8253.