Deconstruction and Politics

This course will explore the uneasy relationship between deconstruction and politics. We will begin the course by familiarizing ourselves with Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive method, and continue by reading his work on issues of justice, law, cosmopolitanism, ethics, and the right to philosophy. The rest of the course will be spent engaging with various contemporaries of Derrida for whom his work in deconstruction and political philosophy has been important: Drucilla Cornell, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

ICS120605/220605 W13

Dr. Shannon Hoff

Tuesdays 1:30-4:30pm

MWS, MA, PhD

Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise

This seminar examines the ancient and medieval discipline of rhetoric and its practitioners’ claim that it represented a properly philosophical discourse.   It does so in terms of a selection of texts drawn from the works of Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,  Augustine, Abelard and Heloise.   In the process, it explores the relationship between affectivity and discursive validity with a view to the effect such a focus has on our understanding of Greek and Latin philosophy, patristic and medieval theology and their intertwined history.

ICS220407 W13

Dr. Robert (Bob) Sweetman

Tuesdays 9:30am-12:30pm

MA, PhD

Curriculum: Organising the World for Learning

Curriculum is the selection and organisation of experience for pedagogical purposes. The criteria that determine what is selected and how it is organised articulate fundamental values about the nature of the world and our calling in it. This course will encourage critical evaluation of the criteria that are commonly employed and of how the curriculum can be shaped to better reflect a Christian worldview. Curriculum is conceived not as a static collection of materials, but as a dynamic plan that directs the learning process and governs the organically developing relationship between teachers and learners. Teachers are curriculum workers, charged with reflective responsibility as they conduct themselves in their profession. Whether adopting and adapting an externally prescribed curriculum or designing a curriculum from its inception, Christian teachers have a responsibility to ensure that the curriculum reflects a biblical worldview, in structure as well as in content, and that learners are invited to respond from their hearts in obedience to the call of God in Christ, Scripture and creation.

ICSD120307/220307 W13

Instructor: TBD

MWS, MA, PhD

Christianity and Ecological Crisis

"The attitudes to save the environment should be imbued with a vision of the sacred."

—David Suzuki at the Global Forum of the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 5 June, 1992
Critics often blame Christian culture, and sometimes rightly, for either ignoring or contributing to the global ecological crisis.  This course will examine some Christian responses to the ecological crisis that
contest this characterization. These include claims that the responsibility for the global ecological crisis is complex and multifaceted as well as arguments that Christianity can resist and undo the attitudes that helped create the crisis.  We shall explore agrarian essays, ecological theology, and international initiatives on ecological activities. We may also visit a farm whose inhabitants integrate their faith and their lifestyle.  In this discussion-intensive seminar, participants will consider what role Christian faith can and should play in a strong environmental ethic.

ICSD130509/230509 W13

Instructor: TBD

MWS, MA, PhD

Biblical Foundations

This course will explore the Bible as the ongoing story of and for God and creation, paying special attention to the way in which God's story is intertwined with that of humanity and the world. In asking whether and in what way the Bible is also our story, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise.

ICSD1108AC/2108AC W13

Instructor: TBD

MWS, MA, PhD

Truth and Authenticity: Heidegger’s Being and Time

Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time proposes a holistic conception of truth that can reconnect epistemology with cultural practices and social institutions. Yet his conception seems to make personal or communal “authenticity” the key to attaining truth. This seminar develops a constructive critique of Heidegger’s conception of truth by examining its internal logic and its hermeneutical role.

ICS220706 W13

Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart

Mondays 9:30am-12:30pm

MA, PhD

Thinking The World Of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/theology

How can the language of creation adequately reveal God if the God of creation transcends creation? This perennial question has most often been approached within an analogical view of language which presupposes an ontotheological view of the God/world relationship. Attentive to the influence of the Great Chain of Being on this view of (language for) the divine, we shall also examine whether there has ever been a viable alternative. Is it possible to see transcendence and immanence not as attributes of God and creation, respectively, but as facets of creation and thus creational revelation?

ICS220808 W13

Dr. Nik Ansell

Fridays 9:30am-12:30pm

MA, PhD

Pragmatism and Religion: Dewey, Rorty, and Stout

How does pragmatism's central tenet, which states that the meaning and worth of ideas lies in their practical consequences, comport with religious forms of life and the understandings of morality they fund?  Does pragmatism's suspicion regarding traditional “supernaturalist” theologies leave any space to think alternatively about God and the human relationship with God?   What role do pragmatists see for religion in a democratic society, if any?  In addressing these questions, this seminar will focus on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Jeffrey Stout.

ICS120501/220501 W13

Dr. Ron Kuipers

Thursdays 1:30pm-4:30pm

MWS, MA, PhD

IDS: (full title TBD)

Interdisciplinary Seminar: To Be Determined

ICS2400AC W13

Wednesdays 9:30am-12:30pm