Dear Friends and Members of the Section,

The Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities will host a North American Conference in two locations, San Francisco and Toronto, for friends and members of the Section in 2024. Christiane Haid, who is the Goetheanum leader of the Literary Arts & Humanities Section (Beautiful Sciences) and the Visual Arts Section of the School for Spiritual Science will attend and present at both locations.

This is a conference devoted to poetic language and the literary imagination.

The Section leadership group gave the conference the title “The Genius of Language” (from a series of lectures by Rudolf Steiner to the first Waldorf teachers) — but by this we don’t mean that this is a linguistics conference. The word “genius” should be understood as “spirit of place” — Latin "genius loci.” 

What are the presiding spirits of our North American landscapes and how do they inform our varied literatures? Each conference location will speak to its local spirits: Toronto to Canadian literatures, San Francisco to the literatures of the United States, but more specifically to the bio-regional literatures of Northern California and Alta California. How does landscape inform and guide poetic vision? How does climate and geography—elementals and weather—the interplay of sunlight and ocean wave—grassland and redwood—animal and human being—nourish a poetic ecology? What are our stories and poems that are spoken from these spirits of place? What is next for the Section?

Registrations for San Francisco will close on July 1, 2024.

Toronto registrations are available until the beginning of the event.

All best wishes,

Bruce Donehower (Section Representative to the Goetheanum) on behalf of the North American Section Leadership Group: Fred Dennehy (USA), Gayle Davis (USA), Arie van Ameringen (Canada), Robert McKay (Canada), Herbert Hagens (USA), Susan Koppersmith (Canada), Clifford Venho (USA), Robert McDermott (USA), Philip Thatcher (Canada)