SPECIAL EVENTS

Jung Center of Houston presents The Soul of Houston.

Eight Houstonians - writers, scholars, ministers, city officials, urban planners, therapists, and others - explore our shared identity in this free conference sponsored with The Honors College at the University of Houston.

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,  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, Steven Klineberg, Annise Parker, Pittman McGehee, Tom Cole, Roger Wood, Susan Young, John Walsh.

Click here to view a conference brochure.