Beauty: Theology, Ethics, or Aesthetics?

Is beauty simply “in the eye of the beholder” or is it something more? Is it a way to God, a moral precept, or the specific locus for a unique kind of pleasure? This course examines a variety of subjective and objective views of beauty in the history of Western philosophy and theology from antiquity to the present (e.g. in the thought of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Weil, Barth, and Balthasar). It will also consider the implications of these views of beauty for the production of the visual arts, music, and literary culture in Western religion and society.

ICS 220105 F25
ICH3757HF L0101 / ICH6757HF L0101*
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Thursdays, 10am - 1pm
Online Synchronous

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with the ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

The Aesthetics of Compassion

The emotion of “pity” (eleos) or “compassion” is at the heart of Athenian tragedy, the great forbear of Western tragic drama. For Aristotle, creating feelings of pity and fear in an audience was thought to provoke a catharsis of those emotions that enabled a positive moderation of our passionate natures. But, as George Steiner has observed, the subject matter of tragedy places those emotions in a register beyond the ordinary. As fundamental human responses to extraordinary human suffering, they signal the “core of dynamic negativity” that underwrites authentic tragedy. Raising the problem of human pain and fragility in the face of circumstances potentially beyond human control, representations of human suffering have a metaphysical and, more particularly, theological dimension that has long provoked philosophical interest in the dynamics of tragic drama. In this course, we will examine the interface between philosophy and works of tragic drama as that interface pertains to the psychology and aesthetics of compassion. Looking to such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil, we will investigate the place of compassion in Western philosophy and theology and the roles that art and imagination have played in the stimulation of compassionate response. 

Dr. Rebekah Smick
ICS 120104 / 220104 F24
ICH5751HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10:00am-1:00pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register is September 13, 2024. 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.

Art, Religion, and Theology (ART)

- POSTPONED TO 2025 -

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, graduate students in relevant fields, and other adult learners interested in engaging the intersection of art, religion, and theology.

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

Intensive, July 14 - August 3, 2024

Orvieto, Italy

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS AiO 120102 / 220102 S24*

ICH3350HS / ICH6350HS L4101**

For some, the idea of an expressly Christian art is a literal impossibility in the contemporary art world context. According to such a view, the sheer notion of a “Christian art” defies the very nature of art as we understand it. It suggests that art is a form of propaganda rather than the free expression of an individual artist. Yet, explicitly Christian art dominates the walls of most Western art museums. Further, much of this art is thought to represent the height of Western art practice. What is this puzzling history able to tell us about the relationship of art to Christianity? How have Christians understood are to function religiously and what relation does it have to how art is conceived in the modern context? 

This course will examine the art traditions of the three main branches of Christianity in their historical contexts with a view to understanding the relationship of Christianity to art today. It will consider the art histories of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity, the theology pertinent to their understandings of the religious image, and what contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians have to say about the possibilities for Christian art in modern society. Taking full advantage of our setting in Orvieto, we will explore the art of the area as well as in Rome, Assisi, and Florence. The methodology used in the course will be a mix of lecture and class discussion on assigned readings.

Syllabus

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Artists' Workshop

Dr. Rebekah Smick, and David Holt

ICS AiO 1501VAA / 2501VAA S24*

ICP3851HS / ICP6851HS 0101**

The goal of this studio residency is to help practicing artists make substantial progress with a particular body of work. Participants will develop their artworks through various stages, from initial inspirations, ideas, and studies to more fully realized visual forms, while exploring relevant religious, theological, and art historical dimensions. Although we will emphasize the process of the creation of the works more than their final completion, there will be opportunities to display work produced during the residency. 

Works in a variety of media will be encouraged and supported. Practicing artists of all levels of experience are welcome and guidance will be tailored to meet individual needs, including help with regard to materials, techniques, and design issues; assistance with furthering technical skills; and direction in concept development, research, and interpretive methodologies. In addition to ongoing individual consultation, weekly sharing of one’s progress with the group will provide valuable opportunities for informed feedback and support.

Our well-equipped studio will be within the beautiful large space of a former 13th-century convent, which will allow everyone a dedicated personal workspace as well as space for group work, discussions, and shared displays of artwork. Open access to the studio will ensure ample time to work individually or together with other participating artists. A list of basic supplies will be sent to participants upon registration.

Syllabus (forthcoming)

Enrolment Notes:

Instructions on how to apply are available on the program page. March 31, 2024 is the application deadline for courses in the ART in Orvieto summer program. ICS reserves the right reject applications when the maximum capacity has been reached.

*NOTE: Each course is approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

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

- POSTPONED TO 2025 -

Reconsidering Kant's Aesthetics

Until recently, it was customary to regard Kant as the thinker who definitively separated aesthetic knowledge from the domains of reason and morality by identifying its core epistemological activity as a kind of judgment that he qualified as a matter of taste. The postmodern rejection of the “modernist” practice of aesthetic theory, however, has done much to undermine Kant’s position in both the arts and in philosophy. This course aims to re-examine Kant’s aesthetic theory as set out in his Critique of Judgment of 1790 from the vantage point of the art theoretical literature that preceded it vis a vis the integral place of the aesthetic in both premodern ethics and theology. In an effort to better understand Kant’s contribution to the history of thought about art and its purposes, it will seek to contextualize such “Kantian” themes as judgment, taste, genius, beauty, sublimity and purposiveness. It will also consider to what degree our understanding of Kant has been shaped by later modernist assumptions about the character of his contribution.

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS 120107 / 220107 F23

ICH3761H / ICH6761H L6201*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register is September 15 (Note that the first class for this course takes place on September 13). 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.

Art, Religion, and Theology (ART)

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, graduate students in relevant fields, and other adult learners interested in engaging the intersection of art, religion, and theology.

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

Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS AiO 120102 / 220102 S23*

ICH3350HS / ICH6350HS L4101**

Syllabus

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Artists' Workshop

Dr. Rebekah Smick, and David Holt

ICS AiO 1501VAA / 2501VAA S23*

ICP3851HS / ICP6851HS 0101**

Syllabus

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Writers' Workshop

Dr. Rebekah Smick, and John Terpstra

ICS AiO 1501WA / 2501WA S23*

ICP3861HS / ICP6861HS 0102**

Syllabus

Intensive, July 9 - July 29, 2023

Orvieto, Italy

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Enrolment Notes:

Instructions on how to apply are available on the program page. February 28, 2023, is the application deadline for courses in the ART in Orvieto summer program. ICS reserves the right reject applications when the maximum capacity has been reached.

*NOTE: Each course is approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

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

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

Following Ephesians 2:8, grace is, for Christians, a free gift of salvation bestowed on humankind by God regardless of human merit. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” As the means by which humans participate in God’s plan for humanity, grace is a central theological concept in all forms of Christianity. 

In the history of Western aesthetics, the term "grace" is also of considerable importance. Generically it indicates beauty in movement and expresses the lightness, spontaneity, and naturalness of this movement together with the charm it exerts. By the 18th century, parallel to the birth of modern aesthetics, the achievement of grace in art was routinely considered art’s highest ideal, the “je ne sais quoi” - the inexplicable something extra - that guarantees artistic success. 

At first glance, these two meanings for this one term seem very far from one another. One attempts to account for the quality of God’s interaction with humanity, while the other seeks to describe the surface effects of expressly material goods. It is thus not surprising that these two understandings of grace are rarely thought to intersect, a state of affairs compounded by the fact that the academic study of grace has traditionally only taken place in discrete fields of research. Because of doctrinal differences in the theology of grace, the teaching of grace in Christian seminaries is often part of systematics. Among  historiographers of the arts, the historical concept of grace is often reduced to a matter of style. 

By contrast, this interdisciplinary seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to more fully understand its historical significance, the points of intersection between its contemporary uses,  and its potential usefulness for the philosophy and theology of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, Augustine, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner) as well as works of art and literature for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS 120103 / 220103 F22

ICH3758HS / ICH6758HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 2022. 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.

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 Aesthetics of Compassion

The emotion of “pity” (eleos) or “compassion” is at the heart of Athenian tragedy, the great forbear of Western tragic drama. For Aristotle, creating feelings of pity and fear in an audience was thought to provoke a catharsis of those emotions that enabled a positive moderation of our passionate natures. But, as George Steiner has observed, the subject matter of tragedy places those emotions in a register beyond the ordinary. As fundamental human responses to extraordinary human suffering, they signal the “core of dynamic negativity” that underwrites authentic tragedy. Raising the problem of human pain and fragility in the face of circumstances potentially beyond human control, representations of human suffering have a metaphysical and, more particularly, theological dimension that has long provoked philosophical interest in the dynamics of tragic drama. In this course, we will examine the interface between philosophy and works of tragic drama as that interface pertains to the psychology and aesthetics of compassion. Looking to such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil, we will investigate the place of compassion in Western philosophy and theology and the roles that art and imagination have played in the stimulation of compassionate response. 

Dr. Rebekah Smick
ICS 120104 / 220104 F20
ICH5751HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10am - 1pm

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus


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

Art, Religion, and Theology (ART)

CANCELLED

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, graduate students in relevant fields, and other adult learners interested in engaging the intersection of art, religion, and theology.

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

Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition
ICS AiO 120102 S20
ICH3350HS L4101 / ICH6350HS L4101*
Dr. Rebekah Smick

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Artists' Workshop
ICS AiO1501/2501VAA S20
ICP3851HS / ICP6851HS 0101*
Dr. Rebekah Smick, David Holt

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Writers' Workshop
ICS AiO 1501WA S20
ICP3861HS / ICP6861HS 0102*
Dr. Rebekah Smick, John Terpstra

Intensive, In-Person
Location: Orvieto, Italy (July 16 - August 6, 2020)

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration

CANCELLED

Reconsidering Kant’s Aesthetics

Until recently, it was customary to regard Kant as the thinker who gave definitive form to the notion of aesthetic judgment and who succeeded in explaining why aesthetic experience is something essentially distinct from other kinds of experience. The postmodern rejection of the practice of aesthetic theory, however, has done much to undermine Kant’s position vis-à-vis the arts. This course aims to re-examine Kant’s aesthetic theory from the vantage point of the art theoretical literature that preceded it. In an effort to better understand Kant’s contribution to the history of thought about art, it will seek to contextualize such “Kantian” themes as judgment, taste, genius, beauty, sublimity and purposiveness. It will also consider to what degree our understanding of Kant has been shaped by later modernist assumptions about the character of his contribution.

ICS 220107 W20
ICH 3761HS L0101 / ICH6761 HS L0101*
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Wednesdays, 1:45pm - 4:45pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

Beauty: Theology, Ethics, or Aesthetics?

Is beauty simply “in the eye of the beholder” or is it something more? Is it a way to God, a moral precept, or the specific locus for a unique kind of pleasure? This course examines a variety of subjective and objective views of beauty in the history of Western philosophy and theology from antiquity to the present (e.g. in the thought of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Weil, Barth, and Balthasar). It will also consider the implications of these views of beauty for the production of the visual arts, music, and literary culture in Western religion and society.

ICS 220105 F19
ICH3757HF L0101 / ICH6757HF L0101*
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Thursdays, 5:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: Classroom 2, Knox College**

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

**Also available via Zoom video conference.

ART in Orvieto

CANCELLED

The ART in Orvieto advanced summer studies program will take place in Orvieto, Italy, between July 16 and August 6 in the Summer of 2019. The intensive will include the Art, Religion, and Theology seminar, led by Dr. Rebekah Smick, as well as an artist's workshop led by David Holt.

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

Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition
ICS AiO 120102 S19
ICH3350HS L4101 / ICH6350HS L4101
Dr. Rebekah Smick

ART in Orvieto: Visual Artists Workshop
ICS AiO1501/2501VAA S19
David Holt

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

CANCELLED

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

For much of the Western art tradition, the concept of grace has been an important critical concept for its ability to capture the often elusive quality of artistic affect. Often referred to as the “je ne sais quoi” of art - that something extra that cannot be explained – grace even supplanted beauty for many writers (from Giorgio Vasari to Friedrich Schiller) as the highest artistic ideal. Often missing from modern analyses of the concept, however, are its theological foundations. This seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to understand both its historical significance and its potential usefulness for the philosophy of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Dante, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger) as well as works of art for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

ICS 220103 F18
ICH3758HS L0101 / ICH6758HS L0101 
Dr. Rebekah Smick 
Tuesdays, 1:45pm - 4:45pm
Location: ICS Boardroom, Knox College

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

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

 In everyday language, imagination is something we associate with human creativity as it gets expressed in all areas of knowledge and across all disciplines. Yet, underlying this association is the enduring notion that the imagination utilizes thought processes more germane to the arts than to the sciences. Through an examination of key texts, this course will explore the special relationship of the arts to the concept of the imagination in the history of Western thought. It will also consider the implications this relationship has had for art’s role in the areas of theology and ethics, areas where reason has been thought to fail in providing adequate knowledge.

ICS220106 F17
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesdays 1:45pm-4:45pm
MA, PhD

Draft syllabus, final version TBA

The Aesthetics of Compassion

In light of the recent renewed interest in the meanings and mechanisms of empathy in such areas as ethics, visual studies, and the philosophy of mind, this course examines the place and role of compassion in the development of the Western aesthetics tradition. Considering a range of art theoretical texts, literature, and images for which the theme of compassion has been crucial, the course aims to clarify the ways in which the concept of compassion has been thought able to account for certain of the emotional and cognitive links that exist between an artwork and its audience.

ICS 220104 F16
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesday 1:45pm-4:45pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Beauty: Theology, Ethics, or Aesthetics?

Is beauty simply “in the eye of the beholder” or is it something more? Is it a way to God, a moral precept, or the specific locus for a unique kind of pleasure? This course examines a variety of subjective and objective views of beauty in the history of Western philosophy and theology from antiquity to the present (e.g. in the thought of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Weil, Barth, and Balthasar). It will also consider the implications of these views of beauty for the production of the visual arts, music, and literary culture in Western religion and society.

ICS 220105 F15
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesday 1:30pm-4:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

ART in Orvieto Summer Intensive

The Art in Orvieto advanced summer studies program will take place in Orvieto, Italy between June 29 and July 24 in the Summer of 2015. The intensive will include the Art, Religion, and Theology seminar, led by Dr. Rebekah Smick, as well as and artist's workshop and a writer's workshop (led by Paul Roorda and John Terpstra, respectively).

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

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

For much of the Western art tradition, the concept of grace has been an important critical concept for its ability to capture the often elusive quality of artistic affect. Often referred to as the “je ne sais quoi” of art - that something extra that cannot be explained – grace even supplanted beauty for many writers (from Giorgio Vasari to Friedrich Schiller) as the highest artistic ideal. Often missing from modern analyses of the concept, however, are its theological foundations. This seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to understand both its historical significance and its potential usefulness for the philosophy of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Dante, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger) as well as works of art for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

ICS 220103 W15
ICH3758HS L0101 / ICH6758HS L0101
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Thursdays 9:30am-12:30pm
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Reconsidering Kant’s Aesthetics

Until recently, it was customary to regard Kant as the thinker who gave definitive form to the notion of aesthetic judgment and who succeeded in explaining why aesthetic experience is something essentially distinct from other kinds of experience. The postmodern rejection of the practice of aesthetic theory, however, has done much to undermine Kant’s position vis-à-vis the arts. This course aims to re-examine Kant’s aesthetic theory from the vantage point of the art theoretical literature that preceded it. In an effort to better understand Kant’s contribution to the history of thought about art, it will seek to contextualize such “Kantian” themes as judgment, taste, genius, beauty, sublimity and purposiveness. It will also consider to what degree our understanding of Kant has been shaped by later modernist assumptions about the character of his contribution.

ICS 220107 W15
ICH 3761HS L0101 / ICH6761 HS L0101
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesdays 1:30-4:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Art, Religion, and Theology

The course will explore significant ways that Christians have theologized the arts, artistry and art culture in Eastern and Western Christendom. The course will compare the varieties of theologies that have emerged from within the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. The study will involve looking at paintings, icons, altarpieces, and socially and culturally engaged works of art as well as pertinent theological writings. Students will be evaluated on class participation, seminar presentations, and a research paper on an approved topic. The methodology used in the course will be a mix of lecture and class discussion on assigned readings.

ICS120102 W14
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Thursdays 7:00pm-10:00pm
MWS

Syllabus