Deeper Learning

Deeper Learning is a course for instructional leaders. The course explores what student and teacher practices and classroom and school cultures look like when, “God’s story of restoration for here and now is embodied in deeper learning experiences that connect student mastery of knowledge and skills to character formation and the pursuit of beautiful work that meets real needs for real people” (DeBoer and Cook, “Deeper Learning into what?”).

Deeper Learning is a five-day intensive on-site and in-person course with further writing, reflection, and presentation requirements.

ICSDH 260004 S19
Dr. Gideon Strauss, and Harry Blyleven, Justin Cook, Steven Levy
Hybrid (Online/In-Person)
August 19-23, 2019

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Finding Joy in Learning (Hybrid)

Finding Joy in Learning provides students with a motivating vision of Christian educational innovation and leadership by means of immersive learning experiences, presentations of benchmark projects, interviews with lead practitioners, and readings of key texts. Students are coached through their plan for working through the program as a whole. The course starts students on the path toward their project thesis/portfolio by helping them identify and articulate their research interest.

ICSDH 260001 S19 (Hybrid)
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Hybrid (Online/In-Person)
Dates TBA

(MA-EL)

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

“To the Unknown God”: Paul and Some Philosophers

Key contemporary thinkers within and beyond the borders of Christianity have engaged in a new exploration of Pauline texts, in order to uncover what Jacob Taubes has called Paul’s “political theology.” In this seminar, we will explore key texts in this growing literature, paying particular attention to that group of thinkers whom John D. Caputo has dubbed “the new trinity of Paul”: Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. The relatively recent interest in Paul amongst such “non-religious” thinkers as these prompts several initial questions: Why Paul? Why now? What is it about contemporary global society that has led these thinkers to become convinced that Paul’s writings hold a particularly important and salient message for our time? What do these thinkers say that message is? As we develop various answers to these and other questions through class discussion, we will also pay attention to the way in which this turn to Paul affects the future course of secular thinking. Could it be that this new interest in Paul is a further sign that the West is moving into a ‘postsecular’ era, one that is less allergic to religious sources of insight into the shared social and political problems that the global human community currently faces? In turn, we will also explore how the insights of these philosophers affect a Christian’s understanding of Paul’s writings.

ICS 220510 S19
ICT5764HS L0101
Drs. Ron Kuipers, Jeff Dudiak
May 23-31, 2019
Location: Classroom C, Regis College

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

IDS - Order, Wonder, Love: Reflections on the (True) Origin and End of Philosophy

This course will examine the triangulation of wonder, order, and love via reflections on the origin and end of philosophy. In so doing it picks up on the theme of order and love that became so important in the Winter 2018 IDS on the Legacy of Seerveld, Hart, and Olthuis, adding to order and love, reflections on wonder both as it functions within contemporary continental thought and within Reformational perspective.

*Note the course starts on January 14, 2019

ICS 2400AC W19
Drs. Nik Ansell, Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Tuesdays, 1:45pm - 4:45pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

God in Flesh and Blood: Revolutions in Christology

How does the biblical portrayal of Jesus relate to the narrative movement(s) of the Hebrew Bible? To what extent do the OT themes of exile and return, old age and new age, help deepen our understanding of the birth and crucifixion of the Messiah? If we worship Jesus, are we to worship his humanity as well as his divinity? Does Mary’s encounter with Gabriel, who is a named presence in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament only in the Book of Daniel, indicate that her conception of Jesus is to be read apocalyptically? Is it significant that Elizabeth initially greets Mary with words otherwise associated with Jael and Judith? These are some of the exegetical and theological questions we will consider in this engagement with issues at the edge, and at the heart, of contemporary Christology. Conversation partners will include: James Dunn (Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?), Jane Schaberg (The Illegitimacy of Jesus), and N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began).

ICS 240811 W19
ICT3201HS L0101 / ICT6201HS L0101
Dr. Nik Ansell
Thursdays, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart, and Women’s Spirituality

This seminar examines Meister Eckhart’s mystical discourse and its conceptual configuration as a ‘contradictory monism’ against the backdrop of the “Dionysian” tradition of Albert the Great (and Thomas Aquinas) and the current efflorenscence of women’s mysticism represented by Marguerite Porete.

ICS 220409 W19
ICH5155HS L0101
Dr. Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Wednesdays, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Classroom 2, Knox College
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Black Panther, Afrofuturism, and the Ethics of Liberation

The film Black Panther raises questions about the prospects for and ethics of liberation. What is to be done by the victims of oppression and exploitation? Is armed struggle against oppressors an appropriate (perhaps even necessary) strategy for movements of liberation? Or is nonviolent resistance a better (perhaps the only moral) strategic option for such movements? What should come first, ethically and strategically: liberation or education? On what grounds can people participate in or ally themselves with movements of liberation? These are not only questions for the Wakandans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These and similar questions were vital to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the late 20th century, as they were in many other places and times, and are today. This course will consider such questions with reference to their exploration in the 2018 movie, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, the work of the black American theologian James Cone, the legacies of South African anti-apartheid activists and theorists Steve Biko and Rick Turner (both murdered by the apartheid state), and contemporary Afrofuturism.

ICS 242506 W19

Dr. Gideon Strauss
Wednesdays, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Location: Classroom 2, Knox College

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Lead From Where You Are: Making a Difference in the Face of Tough Problems, Big Questions, and Organizational Politics (Hybrid)

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. The kind of leadership that we will learn and practice in this course has to do with diagnosing and addressing the toughest problems experienced by organizations, institutions, and societies. This kind of leadership demands political skill: the skill to discern the overt and covert concerns and interests, agendas, and alliances within the organizations, institutions, and societies we serve, and to give each their due while not failing to pursue the common good. We will learn a language, learn and practice a set of tools and frameworks, and workshop our fresh insights and skills. (This course will draw heavily on both the writing and the pedagogy of Ronald Heifetz and Dean Williams.)

This is a thirteen-week online course, starting in the week of January 7 and finishing in the week of April 7. There will be no assignments due during ICS’s reading week, February 18 to 22. For participants doing the course or credit all outstanding work will be due by no later than May 24.

ICSDH 132504 W19
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Hybrid (Online/In-Person)

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus