Course Syllabi
http://hdl.handle.net/10756/337944
Syllabi authored by ICS faculty members2024-01-11T18:03:29ZVocational Wayfinding
http://hdl.handle.net/10756/620063
Vocational Wayfinding
Strauss, Gideon
“What am I to do with my life?” “Who am I?” There appears to be an inextricable connection between the work that we do and our sense of who we are. As the poet David Whyte has suggested, work is for all of us a pilgrimage of identity. It is not, however, a pilgrimage for which any of us are provided with a GPS device, allowing us to navigate in straight lines with comfortable certainty towards clear career objectives that cohere in obvious ways with an immutable sense of our identity. Instead, this pilgrimage is more like the experience of Polynesian sailors, who traversed the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean with the help of the stars, memory, and close attention to the patterns of the waves on the surface of the ocean as these reflected features of the ocean (including far-off islands). Polynesian wayfinding was a way of navigating that required alert improvisation and frequent reorientation from within a perpetually shifting context. Our vocational pilgrimages require of us to find our way in a similar manner.
In this course we will explore particular practices, frameworks, and tools, by means of which we can engage in vocational wayfinding. Prompted by our readings we will consider some of the relationships between work and identity: How does my work prompt my discovery of my sense of self? How do I try out possible selves in relation to whatever in the world is calling me toward particular kinds of work? What am I to do with my life? We will give close attention to those passages in our lives (in particular young adulthood and the middle passage of life) when both our work contexts and our experience of our identity are most obviously in flux. In addition, we will consider how to contribute skillful leadership and insightful mentoring to others as they engage in their own vocational wayfinding, particularly in the contexts of the workplace and educational institutions.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZDemocracy and Diversity
http://hdl.handle.net/10756/583340
Democracy and Diversity
Shadd, Philip
Modern democracies are not only made up of diverse individuals but diverse cultures. How ought liberal democracies address cultural pluralism, especially when the claims of cultures conflict? This question is explored principally by critically examining liberal multiculturalism, which argues that group-differentiated rights are not only consistent with, but required by, the basic liberal democratic values of freedom and equality. Ultimately the course goes beyond a secular multiculturalism by seeking to understand cultural pluralism within a political theological framework. Will Kymlicka and Nicholas Wolterstorff are among the theorists considered, and particular attention is given both to Quebec and Islam as case studies.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZCharles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary
http://hdl.handle.net/10756/556974
Charles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary
Kuipers, Ronald A.
The notion of a "social imaginary"—the way people come to understand their social surroundings by way of images, stories, and legends—plays a key role in Charles Taylor's thought, including his magnum opus, A Secular Age. In this intellectual tour de force, Taylor attempts to trace the historical development of Western secularism as we experience it today. In doing so, he challenges the "subtraction story" which he sees animating the social imaginary of today's typical secularist. According to this story, the emergence of secularism in the West follows a linear trajectory, along which humanity slowly sheds the irrational accretions of myth, religion, and the sacred, in order to uncover a rational core of free thought and autonomous science, which may now flourish without the constraints of heteronomous religious authority. In challenging this story, Taylor offers an intriguing new understanding of Western secularism, as well as tantalizing suggestions concerning the continued social relevance a religious imaginary might have in "a secular age." This seminar will be devoted to an in-depth study of this major work, which in its relatively brief life has already become a landmark text in both the philosophy of religion as well as secularization theory. Through this study, seminar participants will also consider what role Taylor's Roman Catholic religious commitment plays in his thought, as well as the role a religiously-informed "social imaginary" might play in a pluralized global society that is deeply impacted by, but also largely at odds with, the particular social imaginary of Western modernity.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZART in Orvieto Summer Intensive
http://hdl.handle.net/10756/346473
ART in Orvieto Summer Intensive
Smick, Rebekah
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)
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z