The Radical Theopoetics of John D. Caputo

This seminar will explore John D. Caputo’s Theopoetics, a "weak theology" of narratives, prayers and praise in response to the call of God in contrast to a "strong" theology of predicative claims about the existence and nature of God. 

Dr. Jim Olthuis
ICS 150907 / 250907 F21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

With/Out Reason: Art and Imagination in the Western Tradition

Today the imagination occupies an august, if ill-defined, place in the popular mindset. While we might at some level link the imagination to the arts, its capacities for innovation are thought to span all human creative endeavours across the arts and sciences. In Western society today, thinking imaginatively, or outside the box, is a deeply revered feature of our strongly individualistic culture. Yet, until the eighteenth century, the products of human imagination were understood to be unavoidably communal insofar as they were thought to generate certain palpable effects. For good or ill, works of the imagination were expected to aesthetically impact all those who encountered them. They were never simply the result of abstract thought processes that functioned at a level beyond expected norms. Rather, imaginative inventions were governed by an understanding of the imagination in its most ordinary sense as that which creates mental images.

This course will examine the consequences of this understanding of the imagination for the Western tradition and how it has led to where we are today. Through an investigation of key philosophical and theological texts (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Schelling, Coleridge, Derrida) as well as works of art (e.g. Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth), it will look at the place of image and imagination in a variety of forms of cognition from the ‘objective’ world of phenomenon to the ‘inobjective’ world of the highest truths. It will consider the traditional place of imagination in ethical theory. And it will clarify the inextricability of the arts and artistry from this history as well as offer points of departure for a theory of imagination today.

Dr. Rebekah Smick
ICS 120106 / 220106 F21

ICH5752HF L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

The Divine (at) Risk: Open Theism, Classical Theism and Beyond

Did God take a risk in creating the world?  How are divine and human freedom related?  Can we confess God’s sovereignty in the face of evil?  This course will explore the different ways in which the God of history is viewed by advocates and critics of “Open Theism”.  Our examination will stimulate our own reflections on how we might best understand and, indeed, image God’s love, knowledge and power.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 120803 / 220803 F21

ICT3730HF / ICT6730HF L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Recognition in a Colonial Canada

POSTPONED

This course explores and critically assesses the idea of multiculturalism in the context of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous communities. Multiculturalism has long been central to Canada’s national self-identity, and for decades has been reflected in Canadian law and official state policy. To be Canadian, it is said, is to be part of a nation whose democratic institutions recognize and accommodate a plurality of cultural identities, and is to be a member of a populace that is characteristically welcoming of diversity and difference. Taking our cues from Charles Taylor’s seminal 1992 essay “The Politics of Recognition” we will explore the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of multiculturalism as representing the political imperative to recognize cultural diversity and pursue intercultural dialogue. We will then assess the adequacy of a liberal multicultural politics of recognition for addressing the relationship between the Canadian state and Indigenous communities. Here we will be guided by Glen Sean Coulthard’s 2014 work Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, which applies the work of anticolonial theorist Frantz Fanon to argue that the “recognition” of Indigenous claims and communities offered by Canadian state institutions has remained colonial in its dictation of the terms of dialogue, often in culturally and economically self-serving ways. We will also explore what forms of resistance and alternative futures are currently being imagined by Indigenous theorists and authors, as well as what possibilities exist for non-colonial forms of recognition and reconciliation.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt
ICS 153301 / 253301 F21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Mondays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Brief introductory video to the course

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

POSTPONED

Pragmatism, Race, and Religion: Du Bois, West, and Glaude

This course will explore the work of key Black thinkers in the philosophical tradition of American Pragmatism, paying particular attention to the unique way their reflection upon racialized experience shapes and augments key themes within this thought tradition. How might the strain of tragedy and absurdity sounded by Black pragmatists inflect the sense of meliorism and hope for which American Pragmatism is well known? In pursuing this question, the course will pay particular attention to the differing religious pasts of white and black America and ponder these thinkers' understanding of the relevance and complicatedness of Black religious experience in our racially divided era.

Dr. Ron Kuipers
ICS 120501 / 220501 F21

ICT3771HF / ICT6771HF L9101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10am - 1pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

The Observant Participant: Applying Research Craft to Professional Practice

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (Simone Weil)

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” (Simone Weil) 

How do I avoid becoming the proverbial practitioner who, instead of earning ten years of experience, repeats one year of experience ten times over? How do I make sense of my own experience as a practitioner and how do I learn from my experience? How do I learn from the experience of other practitioners? How do I give attention to what matters most? 

In this course we will consider these kinds of questions. We will draw on the critical reflective practices of other practitioners, we will equip ourselves with the methodological tools of qualitative researchers, and we will cultivate an attitude of attentiveness informed by the approach to practice taken by phenomenologists—becoming philosophically skilful students of our own lived human experience. Doing this course together, we will become more observant participants in our lifeworlds and strengthen our capacity as reflective practitioners in our professions and in our scholarship. 

While the focus of this course is on applying research craft to professional practice, the course is also an introduction to graduate level qualitative research and to key perspectives from phenomenological philosophy. 

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICS 132501 / 232501 F21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL, MWS)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

How to Coach a Strong Team: Leading People, Building Instructional Capacity, and Securing Accountability

CANCELLED

How to Coach a Strong Team is a course for new and aspiring principals. The course provides frameworks and tools for setting directions, building relationships, developing people, developing a school culture and structures to support desired practices, and securing accountability.

The course starts with attention to the character of the leader. It continues with an exploration of the processes necessary to gain competency in the cultivation of vision, the nurture of trust, the leading of change, the building of teams, professional coaching, and the supervision of professional development. It concludes with hiring practices, handling conflict, and terminations of service.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICS 260005 F21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

CANCELLED

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Action

Deeper Learning is a course for instructional leaders. It explores learning as a journey from wonder to inquiry to action. This course seeks to help Christian educators develop Deeper Learning within the context of:  

    1. A celebration of the learner - What it means to be created in God’s image? 

    2. A mindfulness towards learning design - How does curriculum, instruction and assessment inspire us to live out our lives as Kingdom Ambassadors who are intentional about character formation and loving our neighbours?  

    3. A responsiveness to culture - How do we embody our mission in every aspect of school life and live it out in God’s world?

(Source: Deeper Learning in Christian Schools: Playing our Part in God’s Story; cace.org) 

ICSD 260004 W21*
Dr. Edith van der Boom
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 3 of the CSTC

Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation

How can we read and experience the Scriptures as the Word of Life in the midst of an Academy that believes the biblical witness will restrict human freedom and thwart our maturity? How may we pursue biblical wisdom as we “re-think the world” when our Christian traditions seem convinced that biblical truth may be disconnected from—or simply applied to—the most pressing and perplexing issues of our time? 

This course will explore the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—as the ongoing story of and for God and all God’s creatures, paying special attention to the way in which humanity’s attempt to find its way is interwoven with the story of the Divine presence and with the wisdom and promise of creation-new creation. In asking whether and how the biblical story may find its future in our ongoing narratives, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods and sensitivities might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise. 

If Jesus is the Living Word at the heart of Scripture, does that change our understanding of where biblical truth is coming from and where it is going? Does the Bible have an implicit, sapiential pedagogy that we have misconstrued? Can the familiar Reformed themes of creation and covenant, election and eschaton speak to us in new, reformational ways? These are some of the questions we shall explore together as we reintroduce ourselves to the biblical writings.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 1108AC / 2108AC F21
ICB2010HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 6pm - 9pm EST

(MWS, MA, MA-EL, PhD)


Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

**NOTE: Approved for Area 1 of the CSTC