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It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

2/23 “On Divine Space,” by JD Lyonhart

There is a genealogical case to be made that the solidity of the modern scientific world picture may have been unwittingly grounded upon a theistic metaphysic. JD Lyonhart on Henry More and the origins of modern space.

CANCELLED

It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

1/26 “The Sacredness of the Person,” by Sharon Kuruvilla

Only a dialectical approach between the Enlightenment and Christianity is capable of grasping the historical dynamics of the emergence of human rights within the European context. Sharon Kuruvilla reviews Hans Joas’s The Sacredness of the Person.

PAST EVENT

It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

“History Wobbles,” by Duncan Reyburn
"In our own time, somewhat in contrast with G. K. Chesterton’s, the watchword decline is more prevalent than progress. We commonly hear of managed decline—although in many instances it does not seem to be managed at all. We still hear of progress, of course, but pervasive political precarity makes progress less trustworthy as a popular category. Chesterton’s philosophy offers a healthy antidote to any historicist fatalism, though, whether it happens to be overly pessimistic (as it is for declinists) or overly optimistic (as it is for progressives)."

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

PAST EVENT

It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

"Modernity and the Evolution of Consciousness" (Part I and Part II), by Ashton Arnoldy
Owen Barfield believed that with the advent of Christ, humanity entered a new phase of its development as a species: this constitutes modernity. "Barfield’s alternative conception of modernity harbors the potential for a renewal of participation—a rediscovery of meaning in a divinely-minded world. . . . His experience was that poetry—Romantic poetry in particular—had the potential to expand perception by rousing the imagination in a way that forged a new unity of self and world."

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

PAST EVENT

It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

“Ghoulish Genealogies,” by Terence Sweeney
"The genealogical description insists on erasing hundreds of years of Christian life. The writer awkwardly alludes to Christianity but cannot imagine that it has any real importance except as a machine for appropriating pagan practices.” Terence Sweeney critiques pop-genealogies of Halloween.

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

PAST EVENT

It’s common for people to associate modernity and modernization with secularization. But Christians have a unique understanding of the secular. The Latin root saeculum can be variously translated as “epoch (this age),” “historical time,” “the world,” and “the time that remains between Christ’s redemptive work on earth and the full restoration of the Kingdom of God in the parousia, the end for which God made the world.” To be secular, in this Christian sense, is just to live in human history—in, but not of, the world. 

“Modern” has a parallel Christian meaning. The Latin root modernus was used in a historical sense as early as 550 AD. “Modern” means this time, this saeculum, rather than the age that came before. For Christians, it’s fitting to say that modernity is every AD date, all the time after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And before the Second Coming. 

With this expansive perspective on modernity, the Dante Society asks, What does it mean to be modern? How has Christianity shaped modernity? What challenges and opportunities do various modernities present to the Church? And how and when do the language and concepts of modernity become hindrances rather than aids to understanding life in time?

We will explore these and other questions in conversation with brief, highly readable essays from the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Each essay takes up some aspect of modern life, or some particular understanding of what it means to be modern, and considers it in light of the Christian intellectual tradition. Discussion will be led by Ryan McDermott. 

Participants should read the essay before the seminar. Each seminar stands on its own, so don’t worry about jumping in whenever you are able. 

“The Path Not Taken: Reconsidering the Way of Winthrop,” by Douglas Sikkema 
John Winthrop’s remarkable “City on a Hill" sermon, outside the distorting lens of contemporary American exceptionalism, might just help us see that a new way forward—a way of love—is perhaps just a really old way forward.

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

REGISTRATION FULL

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we've been reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. 

This semester (September 5th), we will pick up where we left off in Purgatorio (Canto 10) and make it all the way through the rest of the Divine Comedy, finishing Paradiso December 5th.

Dates: Every other Thursday starting September 5th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom

Syllabus

9/5 - Purg. Cantos 9 - 16
9/19 - Purg. 17 - 27
10/3 - Purg. 28 - 33 (end)
10/17 - Pard. 1 - 9
11/7 - Pard. 10 - 22
11/21 - Pard. 23 - 27
12/5 - Pard. 28 - 33 (end)

Registration Full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4 pm on Zoom. RSVP here.

Date: Thursday, April 19th

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm EST

PAST EVENT

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh. This spring, we’re continuing our “Podcasts and Picklebacks” series. We will preview an episode of the new Genealogies of Modernity Podcast and then discuss. The podcast’s main host and Beatrice Institute Senior Research Fellow Ryan McDermott will lead the discussions. Please fill out this form to RSVP!

Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread—and made visible. Art historian Ilona Katzew tells the story of how Spanish colonists of modern-day Mexico developed theories of blood purity and used the casta paintings—featuring family groups with differing skin pigmentations set in domestic scenes—to represent these theories as reality. She also shares the strange challenges of curating these paintings in the present, when the paintings’ insidious ideologies have been debunked, but when mixed-race viewers also appreciate images that testify to their presence in the past.

Registration Full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4 pm on Zoom. RSVP here.

Date: Thursday, April 4th

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm EST

Registration full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4 pm on Zoom. RSVP here.

Date: Thursday, March 21st

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm EST

Registration full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4pm on Zoom. RSVP here.

Date: Thursday, March 7th

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EST

PAST EVENT

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh. This spring, we’re continuing our “Podcasts and Picklebacks” series. We will preview an episode of the new Genealogies of Modernity Podcast and then discuss. The podcast’s main host and Beatrice Institute Senior Research Fellow Ryan McDermott will lead the discussions. Please fill out this form to RSVP!

What is the “traditional American family?” Popular images from the colonial and pioneer past suggest an isolated and self-sufficient nuclear family as the center of American identity and the source of American strength. But the idea of early American self-sufficiency is a myth. Caro Pirri tells the story of the precarious Jamestown settlement and how its residents depended on each other and on Indigenous Americans for survival. Early American history can help us imagine new kinds of interdependent and multi-generational family structures as an antidote to the modern crisis of loneliness and alienation.

PAST EVENT

In today's academic climate, it can be difficult to navigate how to be a Christian graduate student. Specializing programs emphasize — and all but demand — a siloing of one's personal beliefs and one's professional concerns. In effect, becoming a highly specialized and competent professional seems to mandate that one be a Christian and a graduate student, but not a Christian graduate student.

What role can and ought one's faith take in navigating academia? How do friendships, relationships, and mentorships help one overcome the challenge of an ideologically secular academy?

In this panel discussion, four academics will describe how they have managed to integrate their faith commitments and their specialized work. Offering both pragmatic advice and theoretical framings, these successful Christian academics will offer some advice on becoming Christian Graduate students. 

Registration full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4pm on Zoom. Registration for this event is currently full.

Date: Thursday, February 15th

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EST

Registration Full

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh.

This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante's first encounter with the flesh and blood Beatrice who would become la donna gloriosa of Dante's mind. In the chivalric mode, Dante fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine, and throughout his life and career, he would revisit the importance of this encounter. Beatrice dies at a young age, and Dante makes her his guide through Paradise in his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. Of course, Beatrice's role in The Divine Comedy inspires our own Beatrice Institute.

To commemorate this anniversary, we are reading the entirety of The Divine Comedy in a year. The goal is to take a slow, ruminating walkthrough of this text — often hailed as the greatest work of imagination in the Western world — and to come to terms with Dante's grand synthesis of the cosmos and the human heart. Reading only six cantos every two weeks, we will aim to finish Inferno and half of Purgatorio this semester and the other half of Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Fall Semester.

We will meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday at 4pm on Zoom. RSVP here.

Date: Thursday, February 1st

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EST

Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9582671672

Meeting ID: 958 267 1672

Passcode: beatrice

PAST EVENT

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh. We’re calling this fall’s series “Podcasts and Picklebacks.” We will preview an episode of the new Genealogies of Modernity Podcast and then discuss. The podcast’s main host and Beatrice Institute Senior Research Fellow Ryan McDermott will lead the discussions. Please fill out this form to RSVP!

In Darwin’s terms, genealogy is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can challenge the dangerous aspects of modernity claims. Against the effort to erase the past, genealogy asserts that our genetics will always be with us, even if we try to disavow our ancestry. Against the effort to master the past, genealogy reminds us that our descendants have the freedom to create new futures. Sociologist Alondra Nelson tells the story of African-Americans' use of DNA-informed genealogy to partially overcome slavery’s erasure of family history by recovering African identity—in this case, by gaining dual citizenship in Sierra Leone. Genealogical thinking can help us shape a disposition to the past that recognizes the legacy of sin while also fostering human flourishing in the future.

PAST EVENT

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh. We’re calling this fall’s series “Podcasts and Picklebacks.” We will preview an episode of the new Genealogies of Modernity Podcast and then discuss. The podcast’s main host and Beatrice Institute Senior Research Fellow Ryan McDermott will lead the discussions. Please fill out this form to RSVP!

We often think of modernity as a time period in history. But people have been claiming to be modern since at least c. 550 AD, when the Roman writer Cassiodorus used the term modernus to mark off everything that had happened since the fall of the Roman Empire. Harvard scholar Michael Puett takes us back much further, to the third century BC in ancient China, when a series of emperors claimed modernity to consolidate their rule. Puett argues that modernity is best understood as a claim to freedom from the past. By recognizing two forms of modernity claim—one that tries to erase the past and another that tries to master it—we can better understand what is at stake in our own invocations of “modernity."

PAST EVENT

The Dante Society is our group for graduate students and anybody beyond college interested in fostering the Christian intellectual life in Pittsburgh. We’re calling this fall’s series “Podcasts and Picklebacks.” We will preview an episode of the new Genealogies of Modernity Podcast and then discuss. The podcast’s main host and Beatrice Institute Senior Research Fellow Ryan McDermott will lead the discussions. Please fill out this form to RSVP!

This episode introduces the problem of modernity through the test case of mountain climbing and rock climbing, which have featured prominently in claims to modernity since the eighteenth century. Claims to becoming modern through climbing often point back to Italian humanist Francesco Petrarch’s ascent of Mt. Ventoux in 1341, a climb that made him, according to many historians, “the first modern man.” But Petrarch was by no means the first person to climb Mt Ventoux, and his own account is, if anything, counter-modern. By surveying evidence of much earlier climbing in Europe and pre-contact North America, the episode argues that humans have always been climbing mountains and scaling cliffs for a wide variety of reasons. Only recently did they start to think of these achievements as making themselves “modern.”

In the ancient world, it was commonplace to see all of nature as meaningful, full of signs of divine intentions for men. In this enchanted world, everything had its place. The Christian world was no exception, refashioning this system into a biblical frame. As Renaissance astrologers and alchemists pressed the boundaries of the craft to illuminate this system, the system became less and less able to accommodate these observations. The New Philosophy reordered the cosmos, taking these experimental findings and structuring them into a mechanical and mathematical form. Divine intentions became superfluous, even if God still remained the mover. However, it was only a small step from here to render God an epiphenomenon in this disenchanted universe.

Unhappily we have lived, with Christians in feeble spurts trying pitifully to advocate for the Intelligent Designer or the uniqueness of humans over other animals. As Christians fail to move their culture back to a belief in an enchanted universe, or better, life in harmony with it, humanity still suffers ironically in a deep longing for communion with God and nature. We pine away for meaning and purpose, but have excluded their possibility from the start. What then is the solution? Is it to reject ideas which disenchanted the world? Is re-enchantment a return to, say, a Medieval Christian model of the world with all of its pagan trappings? If not, how then can we learn again to see, yet with our modern eyes, what Paul insists we can see (Rom 1), but struggle so much more now to see than in former times?

This seminar will be led by Dr. Jason Rampelt (History of Science and Medicine Archivist, University of Pittsburgh)

Dr. Rampelt completed a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University on John Wallis (1616-1703), the Oxford mathematician and theologian. This was followed by post-doc at the newly formed Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. The research from his PhD was published by Brill.

Dr. Rampelt worked for over three years as a lab technician/manager in the Departments of Neurobiology and Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh then for six years as a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. He is currently the History of Science and Medicine Archivist in Archives & Special Collections in the University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Since Pacem in Terris (1963), Catholic Social Doctrine has attempted to bolster the project of global governance by way of a development of its own basic principles—particularly the principles of the common good and subsidiarity. In the most recent contribution to this strand of social doctrine, Caritas in Veritate (2009), Pope Benedict XVI conspicuously used the language of classical politics, albeit with equally conspicuous imprecision, when he spoke of the polis and res publica. Focusing especially on Caritas in Veritate, this talk will consider how social doctrine might be in need of political philosophy understood as a study of political forms to adjudicate the impasses that arise in the project of global governance, a task implied but not fully developed in Benedict XVI's landmark Social Encyclical.

Patrick Jones is a PhD candidate in moral theology at the Catholic University of America, though he currently lives in Latrobe, PA where his wife Jessica is a professor of philosophy at St. Vincent College. He grew up in Baltimore. He received his BA from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD and his MA from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, and is currently working on a dissertation entitled "The Nation-State and Global Governance: A Question in Modern Catholic Social Doctrine."

This seminar will be led by Dr. Tanner Capps

Acts 17:26 famously declares that "God has made from one [blood] every nation (ethnos) to dwell on all the face of the earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live ..." Like debates over the Christian doctrine of God's life in Trinity, Acts 17 underscores the uncomfortable tension that accompanies human diversity across the shared "unity" of the earth. Come hear Tanner Capps reflect on Acts 17 in conversation with questions of the "idols of blood and soil," community displacement, ethnic hybridity, and God's ongoing mission in the world.

Join Beatrice Institute as we discover the art and prayer of icon writing on February 4th, 2023. As we do so, creating a reminder to pray that can be placed in our everyday living space.  Each participant will come home with their own 5X7” glass icon.

Iconography has a long-standing tradition in Christianity of providing a “window to heaven,” both a sacred presence and a reminder to pray.  Though traditionally associated with egg tempera paint on wood, a long process that takes at least a week for a small icon, icons have also been painted in egg on glass, especially in Romania and Eastern Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.  This was done in family workshops by what we would consider “folk artists,” and so creates an easier tradition to dip into for a 3-hour workshop.

This event is free for our Graduate Fellows—just RSVP at this link. The deadline to RSVP is January 27, 2023.

Presentation Focus

Dr. Gerald McDermott will discuss a central theme of Jesus' teaching in the gospels, the Kingdom of God.  The talk will address such questions as the relative importance of the Kingdom as an early Christian theme, whether it had already arrived in Jesus or was future, whether it was visible or invisible--more internal to the heart or external in the world, whose Kingdom it is--the Father's or the Son's, and what it has to do with a future earthly restoration of Israel.

Bio

Dr. Gerald McDermott is retired from the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School where he taught for five years after teaching world religions and Christian theology at Roanoke College for 26 years.  He is the author, co-author, or editor of two dozen books and hundreds of articles on three principal subjects--Jonathan Edwards, world religions, and the meaning of Israel. He and his wife Jean have three grown sons and twelve grandchildren.