Spring & Summer Courses

ART in Orvieto is an advanced summer studies program in art, religion, and theology located in Orvieto, Italy, a magnificent hill town 90 minutes north of Rome. The program offers an ecumenical exploration of Christian understandings of the arts. It provides a three weeks residency designed for artists, teachers, graduate students in relevant fields, and other adult learners interested in engaging the intersection of art, religion, and theology.

• Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition
  ICS AiO 120102 / 220102 S23 *
  ICH3350HS / ICH6350HS L4101 **
  with Rebekah Smick

• Artists' Workshop
  ICS AiO 1501VAA / 2501VAA S23 *
  ICP3851HS / ICP6851HS 0101 **
  with David Holt

• Writers' Workshop
  ICS AiO 1501WA / 2501WA S23 *
  ICP3861HS / ICP6861HS 0102 **
  with John Terpstra

For further details, please see the dedicated ART in Orvieto webpage.

This is a course that will inspire and support K-12 educators in their own personal journey of learning. Participants will consider a deeply Christian vision for their lives as educators and reflect on teaching practices in light of faith and spiritual practices. It is intended to guide educators on an inner journey as they pursue a path of refreshment and renewal in their work within Christian education. This course seeks to answer the following questions: What is my calling as an educator? How should I intentionally live out my calling to teach?...... [find Zoom session dates and syllabus here]

Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in widely different situations. Leadership can be practiced with varying degrees of authority, from any position, at varying scales of influence, and with varying access to different sources of power. Leadership is the work of motivating a group of people to act in certain ways as they shape what they share.

In this course we will explore two kinds of leadership, positional leadership and contributory leadership, and two kinds of leadership practices, algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices. Positional leadership is the kind of leadership that comes with a particular, recognized position in a group, and contributory leadership is the kind of leadership that you can contribute regardless of your position in a group. Algorithmic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals, and heuristic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are not (or not yet) clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals and that demand imaginative discernment. We will attend to leadership with regard to both making beneficial change happen and ensuring needed maintenance.... [find Zoom session dates and syllabus here]

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” (Karl Marx)

Although Marxists and Christians have found plenty of reasons to be mutually suspicious, prominent voices in both historical communities explored creative ways of relating to one another, politically and ideologically, throughout the 20th century and beyond. Through dialogical exchanges, party documents, revolutions, organizing, and theological reflection, important questions were raised, if not always solved. Were the first Christians communists? Does materialism disqualify Christians from Marxist analysis? Can Marxist political parties accommodate Christian believers, and how far can Christians go in participating in Marxist revolutions?

This class will explore these questions by reading several Marxists on Christianity (e.g. Lenin, Luxemburg, Castro) and several Christians on Marxism (e.g. McCabe, Soelle, West) to better understand where these perspectives found points of agreement and disagreement. Because neither Marxism nor Christianity are entirely unified traditions of thought, the selection of authors will aim to represent at least some of this diversity, although privileging voices that made an effort to bring these two discourses closer together in some way. Reading these traditions together, we will try to uncover how Christianity contributes to the soul of soulless conditions, and also what it might mean to embody that soul in the flesh of political organization... [more info here]

This course explores the interrelation of political, social, and religious life in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. Readings will be drawn from Hegel’s lectures on art and religion, as well as his works Elements of the Philosophy of Right and Phenomenology of Spirit. We will explore the political and social conditions of human experience through the lens of what Hegel calls “objective spirit,” focusing in particular on how our freedom as self-conscious beings is enabled and supported by the domains of ethical life, law, and civil society. We will also explore Hegel’s account of the human engagement in “absolute spirit,” here attending to the distinctive practices of art and religion, and to how these practices are interwoven with social and political life. We will also consider Hegel’s role in the historical construction of the modern West’s category of religion, and on what is involved in thinking about religion and religious difference (and Hegel’s philosophy itself) beyond Eurocentrism.... [More info here]