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Can a city have a soul? We are inundated with information about Houston,
and each of us has our own experience of living here. But what does it
mean for us to live here?
When we ask what it means to live in Houston, we ask questions about
the city’s psyche, or soul. Is there a psychology of Houston? Do our beliefs,
practices, and confl icts diff erentiate us from other cities? Can we talk about
Houston as something greater than the sum of our economic, political,
social, religious, and geographical ties?
During The Soul of Houston, nine presenters – poets, ministers, scholars,
urban planners, city offi cials, psychotherapists – will join participants to
engage the vital question of our shared experience. We will examine our
images: the rising spirit in our skyscrapers, our swamplands that forever
drain into the bay, the black oil that feeds our growth, the diminishing
forest that shelters and hides us, the concrete surge that threatens to
overwhelm us. We will look at our history and our often forgotten cultural
heritage. And we will imagine what Houston – which often seems like a
gawky adolescent, struggling to discover its identity – might become as it
continues to develop and mature.
Invited speakers include: Rev. William Lawson, Mark Doty, Steven Klineberg, Annise Parker, Pittman McGehee, Tom Cole, Roger Wood, Susan Young, John Walsh |
