Forthcoming: Transforming Vision 40th Anniversary Republication

J. Richard Middleton has signed a contract with InterVarsity Press to do a complete rewrite of The Transforming Vision (IVP), which he coauthored with Brian Walsh in 1984. Richard is an ICS-VU PhD graduate (2005) and is currently Professor Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan University. He has been teaching a signature course on a Christian worldview over the past forty years (most recently called, “Being in the Story,” at Northeastern Seminary). The rewrite of Transforming Vision aims to deepen the original book’s biblical analysis and extend its cultural analysis. 

The new book is tentatively titled, Shaped by God’s Story: Christian Worldview in a Global Key (IVP Academic) and the aim is for the book to come out sometime in 2024, around the time of the 40th anniversary of the original publication.

The Transforming Vision arose out of worldview courses sponsored by ICS, which were then taught through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship on university campuses in Southern Ontario. The book met a need among Christians in academia and has since been used in hundreds of courses on Christian college and university campuses, both in North America and overseas. It has been translated into five languages (Korean, French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Based on the popularity of the book in Korean and Indonesian translations (with new editions published in the past decade), Richard has also been invited to be the keynote speaker, giving two talks on a Christian worldview, at the upcoming International Network for Christian Higher Education (INCHE) conference for Asia and Oceania, at Handong Global University, Pohan, South Korea on June 20–22, 2023.

CPRSE at Society for Ricoeur Studies Annual Conference

The CPRSE will travel to present at the upcoming 16th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference, held on October 20-22 in Los Angeles, California on the theme of Capability, Fragility, and Joy. The event will feature keynote addresses by Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles) and Christina Gschwandtner (Fordham University, New York City) as well as a number of presentations and workshops from international conference participants.

CPRSE Associate Director Héctor Acero Ferrer will moderate some of the conference sessions. Héctor and ICS alums Andrew Tebbutt and Abbi Hofstede, and PhD candidate Mark Standish will also together present the panel “Public Fragility, Fragile Publics: Ricoeur’s Political Thought from Root to Branch,” exploring the political, economic, and religious thought of Paul Ricoeur.

You can find out more about the Society for Ricoeur Studies and their annual conference here.

Forthcoming Anthology on Existential Gratitude by Harris, DeRoo & Lougheed

A new anthology entitled Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious will be published by Bloomsbury in March 2023, and is currently available for preorder on the publisher's website. 

The volume is edited by ICS alums and The King's University professors Joshua Lee Harris and Neal DeRoo, and Kirk Lougheed of LCC International University, Lithuania / University of Pretoria, South Africa. Harris was awarded a research grant in the fall of 2021 to study the psychological, philosophical, and theological dimensions of gratitude. That original grant has since fed into a symposium on the topic, articles, podcast interviews, and most recently, the forthcoming publication of this collection of essays. You can read more about this volume below.

Publisher's Description

Existential gratitude—gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole—is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural, and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time.

A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character.

Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analyzing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism, and theology.

Table of Contents

Introduction 
Joshua Lee Harris (The King's University, Canada), Kirk Lougheed (LCC International University, Lithuania /University of Pretoria, South Africa) and Neal DeRoo (The King's University, Canada)

Part I. Gratitude in Human Life

1. Grounding Existential Gratitude: A Social Form Account 
Joshua Harris (The King's University, Canada) 

 

2. Gratitude and Resentment: A Tale of Two Weddings
Graham Oppy (Monash University, Australia) 

 

3. Gratitude and the Human Vocation
Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

 

Part II. Gratitude and Existence

4. Generous Existence? Gift, Giving, and Gratitude in Contemporary Phenomenology
Christina Gschwandter (Fordham University, USA) 

 

5. Analogia Gratiae: Creation, Existence, and Gift in the Christian Metaphysics of Erich Przywara

Eric Mabry (St. Mary's Seminary and University, USA) 

 

6. Gratitude for Life-Force in African Philosophy  

Thaddeus Metz (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

 

Part III. Gratitude and the Divine

7. The Dilemma of Gratitude

Michael Almeida (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA)

8. Is Gratitude Necessary? Avicenna on Existential Dependence

Catherine Peters (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

9. Do we Owe Gratitude to God for Our Existence?

Kirk Lougheed (University of Pretoria, South Africa) 

 

10. Thank You: William Desmond's Ethic of Gratitude and Personal God
Ethan Vanderleek (Marquette University, USA)

 

Shattering Silos: New Book on Knowledge from Lambert Zuidervaart

Lambert Zuidervaart, ICS Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophy, has published a new book of essays in reformational philosophy titled Shattering Silos: Reimagining Knowledge, Politics, and Social Critique (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). 

Knowledge, he argues, takes different forms in various social domains, and all are subject to political struggle. Interweaving epistemology, social criticism, and political thought, Shattering Silos offers a new way to think about truth and politics in a supposedly post-truth society. 

The book is funded in part by grants from the Reid Trust and the Andreas Center at Dordt University. It is dedicated to Nicholas Wolterstorff. 

More details can be found at the publisher’s website.

Forthcoming Volume on Irigaray from Ruthanne Crapo Kim

ICS alum Dr. Ruthanne Crapo Kim (Minneapolis Community and Technical College) has co-edited a collection engaging Luce Irigaray's work and pushing it in important new directions. The book is titled Horizons of Difference: Rethinking Space, Place, and Identity with Irigaray and is co-edited by Yvette Russell and Brenda Sharp. The book is due to be released by SUNY Press this July. 

If you'd like to get a copy for yourself, it is available for preorder through the publisher's website. A publisher's description and table of contents follow below.

Publisher's Description

Horizons of Difference offers twelve original essays inspired by Luce Irigaray's complex, nuanced critique of Western philosophy, culture, and metaphysics, and her call to rethink our relationship to ourselves and the world through sexuate difference. Contributors engage urgent topics in a range of fields, including trans feminist theory, feminist legal theory, film studies, critical race theory, social-political theory, philosophy of religion, environmental ethics, philosophical aesthetics, and critical pedagogy. In so doing, they aim to push the scope of Irigaray's work beyond its horizon. Horizons of Difference seeks conversations that Irigaray herself has yet to fully consider and explores areas that stretch the limits of the notion of sexuate difference itself. Sexuate difference is a unifying mode of thought, bringing disparate disciplines and groups together. Yet it also resists unification in demanding that we continually rethink the basic coordinates of space, place, and identity. Ultimately, Horizons of Difference insists that the fragmented, wounded subjectivities within the dominant regime of masculine sameness can inform how we negotiate space, find place, and transform identity.

Table of Contents

Introduction 
Ruthanne Crapo Kim, Yvette Russell and Brenda Sharp

Part I: Trans Identities and Sexual Violence

Chapter 1 – Tarrying with Sexual Difference

Athena V. Colman

Chapter 2 - Rethinking Feminist Resistance to Rape: Irigaray and Erotic Transformation

Yvette Russell

Part II: Sexuate Ontology

Chapter 3 - The Conditions of Emergence: Irigaray, Primordial Wombs, and The Origins of Cellular Life

Annu Dahiya

Chapter 4 - Irigaray’s Extendable Matrix: Cosmic Expansion-Contraction and Black Hole Umbilical Cords 

MD Murtagh

Chapter 5 - Irigarayan Ontology and the Possibilities of Sexual Difference

James Sares

Part III: Divine Women

Chapter 6 - A Theology of Lips: Beyond the Wounding of Desire

Wesley N. Barker

Chapter 7 - Hailing Divine Women in Godard’s Hail Mary and Miéville’s The Book of Mary

Tessa Ashlin Nunn

Part IV: Rethinking Race and Sexual Difference

Chapter 8 - White Supremacist Miscegenation: Irigaray at the intersection of Race, Sexuality, and Patriarchy

Sabrina L. Hom

Chapter 9 - Justice in an Unjust World: The Politics of Narration in Luce Irigaray and Frank Miller’s Sin City

Mary C. Rawlinson

Part V: Environments of Relational Difference

Chapter 10 - Artificial Life, Autopoiesis, and Breath: Irigaray with Ecological Feminism and Deep Ecology

Ruthanne Crapo Kim

Chapter 11 - She Speaks in Threes: Irigaray, at the Threshold between Phenomenology and Speculative Realism in Teaching Architecture

Michael Lucas

Chapter 12 - Commonality in Breath: Reading Northern Ireland’s ‘Peace Process’ through the Material Ontologies of Irigaray and Manning

Ciara Merrick

Jeff Dudiak Publishes Next Book in Currents of Reformational Thought Series

The latest book in the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics' Currents in Reformational Thought book series has just been published with Wipf and Stock! 

Dr. Jeffrey Dudiak, ICS alum and Professor of Philosophy at The King's University in Edmonton, is the author of this newest title in the series: Post Truth? Facts and Faithfulness. This book is available directly from the publisher's website as well as other online book sellers. Here is a brief synopsis of the book from the publisher's site:

In Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness, Jeffrey Dudiak explores the fissures and fractures that vex our so-called "post-truth" era, searching for a deeper, dare we say truer, understanding of the cultural forces that have led North American society to become so polarized. Eschewing the kind of easy responses that trade pluralistic solidarity for tribalistic certainty, Dudiak diagnoses a deeper breakdown in social trust as the underlying issue that has everyone today scurrying for comforting, ideological cover. In this context, Dudiak reminds the reader that truth is more, and runs deeper, than simple correspondence to the facts.

King's University Public Lecture Series Featuring ICS Alumni

The King's University will be hosting an online Spring Lecture Series via Zoom on Thursday evenings (7-8:30pm MST) throughout the months of May and June.

The theme for May's lectures is Theological Thoughts: Gratitude, Wisdom, Authenticity, and Followership. The first two lectures will take place on May 6 and 13, and will feature talks by two ICS alumni and King's faculty members Dr. Joshua Harris (PhD 2019) and Dr. Jeffrey Dudiak (PhD 1998). 

On May 6th, Dr. Harris will be presenting on the topic:“In All Things Give Thanks”: Cosmic Gratitude and Natural Theology. On May 13th, Dr. Dudiak will be presenting on the topic All is Vanity: The Wisdom of Ecclesiastes for Today with students from his "Biblical Wisdom in the Age of Science" course. 

You can register for these or any of the other lectures in the series here on King's website: https://www.kingsu.ca/research/public-lectures/events.

OTHER MAY LECTURES

May 20 – Mr. Ray Klassen
Title of Lecture: Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, and Christ Jesus: Authenticity in Times of Uncertainty

May 27th. Dr Robert Huizinga
Title: Following in the Footsteps of Jesus


JUNE LECTURES:

June 3: Dr Joanne Moyer
Title: Working for God and Sustainability: Tales from Two Continents

June 10- Dr. Brian Martin
Title: Astronomy and the Muse

New Janet Read Exhibition and Online Opening

Artist and ICS alum Janet Read will be opening her new exhibition, High Arctic Light: Paintings and Bookworks, through the Propeller Art Gallery on November 7th. The exhibition will start before the opening, and run in person at the gallery from October 28 through November 15.

Please read more below for details about the gallery and a statement from Janet about the inspiration for the exhibition, and consider joining the virtual opening on Nov. 7th for yourself.

Artist Statement by Janet Read

My current body of work presents “landscapes of consciousness” from a month’s immersion in high Arctic geography. I visited Pond Inlet, Grise Fjord and areas of Devon, Philpotts, and Ellesmere Islands.

Paintings reference the artist’s “being” in the natural world and encounters with those for whom the high north is both wild and home. My paintings are reflective of my personal experience, always aware that Inuit voices must be heard to tell their own stories and history. My work tells the story of a visitor, a sojourner to a remote and sublime region of Canada.

My purpose is to highlight this region and the themes of "wilding and cultivation." These themes invite the viewer to unpack moral, aesthetic, and legal relationships to the land and the people for whom it is sustenance and spirit: landscape and home. The wild is evident in the land and sea. Cultivation is the sea as resource and garden.

Wilding and cultivation go hand in hand in this delicately balanced environment. My work explores these dualities to raise awareness of this fragile and beautiful part of our country through explorations of light, earth, and sea.

Opening and Artwork

Due to the pandemic there will be a Zoom opening on Saturday, November 7th at 2 – 3:00pm EST, rather than a physical onsite opening. To attend, please register with Eventbrite through the gallery by Friday, November 6th: www.propellerartgallery.ca

Janet's drawing, High Arctic: dark horizon #1, was awarded the Juror's Prize at the 2020 Carmichael Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed, at the Orillia Museum of Art and History. [Oct. 2 - Jan.17, 2021] www.instagram.com/p/CGFDIlYlS3W/

Janet's experience with Adventure Canada, the impetus for this body of work, is also highlighted as part of the Mindful Explorers section on their website: www.adventurecanada.com/canadian-high-arctic-and-greenland/high-arctic-light-wilding-and-cultivation

     

Exhibition Details

Janet Read | High Arctic Light: Paintings and Bookworks

Propeller Art Gallery: Oct. 28 through Nov. 15, 2020

Wednesday through Sunday: 1:00 to 5:30 pm or by appointment

All Covid-19 protocols are in place at the gallery.

Propeller Art Gallery, 30 Abell Street, Toronto, ON

Phone: 416-504-7142 

Email: info@propellerartgallery.ca

A full e-catalogue of works will be available for viewing on the gallery website when the show opens, or you may email the artist at info@janet-read.com to receive a pdf.

- - -

First image: High Arctic: the vernacular of light, 60x42, oil on linen

Second image: deep ice, deep sky #1, 18x18, oil on panel, 2020 

Third image: Ice #3, 5x5 inches, oil on duralar, 2020

Glory to God in the Kitchen: an Art Exhibition by ICS Graduate Ann Post

Still Life with Copper Pot (2018) by Ann Post 

"Sharing the beauty and mystery of art with others has always brought me tremendous pleasure and satisfaction. During the course of my life, I have loved looking at art, making art, displaying art, teaching art; as well as writing about it. In my experience, art connects with every aspect of life: spirituality, nature, people, places, and objects. There is virtually no end to what art can do to enrich and to enhance life. Art has felt like a religious calling or 'vocation' for me. And I believe that art is not meant to be greedily hoarded only for one’s own personal pleasure or monetary gain as a commodity. Rather, it is to be shared with others in this world which God has made and has so freely and graciously given to us. We have been made in the Divine Creator’s image. There is a natural rhythm built into our nature; to give and to take; to make and to share."  

- excerpt from Ann Post's project reflection

-----

In the fall of 2018, recent ICS graduate Ann Post (MWS, 2019) put on her first solo exhibition of still life, landscape, and floral paintings in Mount Vernon, New York. This exhibition was hosted in the gallery of the Mount Vernon Library and was a great success. The exhibition was the culmination of work that Ann began earlier in 2018, and continued to work on during the summer while attending ICS's ART in Orvieto program with Rebekah Smick in Orvieto, Italy. 

Her time spent in the Artists' Workshop in Orvieto gave her the time and space to focus her artistic efforts on creating a series of still life paintings inspired by the aesthetics writings of Calvin Seerveld—specifically, a chapter in his Rainbows for the Fallen World (1980) with which her exhibition shares its title: "Glory to God in the Kitchen."

As part of her final project for her MWS degree, Ann described the intersection of reflection and practice made apparent to her through the process of creating her exhibition. She highlighted these influences and put careful consideration into the craft of developing this particular art exhibition with special attention to the audience, the space and logistics, the various interactions of the individual pieces, and the overall desired outcome of displaying her work for others. All these various aspects of her project came together to solidify her desire to make her own experiences of the "gift" of art available to others in her community—to bring it into contact with people in the midst of living their everyday lives. 

ICS is grateful for the time Ann has spent studying and exploring her artistic vocation with us, and we eagerly look forward to keeping an eye out for her future work!

Richard Middleton Elected President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies

ICS Alumnus Richard Middleton, Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary, has been elected President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (CSBS), the oldest academic humanities society in Canada, founded in 1933. Middleton was elected Vice President/President Elect at the 2018 CSBS annual meeting at the University of Regina; he became President on June 1, 2019, during the annual meeting at the University of British Columbia.

Originally from Jamaica, Middleton immigrated first to Canada (where he studied at the ICS and received his PhD from the joint ICS/VU program), then moved to the United States to take up a faculty position. He became a member of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in 1992 and has presented seventeen academic papers at CSBS over those years (as well as twenty-three papers at other academic societies that meet as part of the Congress).

Richard has also published a blog post on being both a Kuyperian and a Wesleyan (originally written as the Foreword to a book on Christian Worldview for Brazilian Christians).
See: https://jrichardmiddleton.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/reflections-of-a-kuyperian-wesleyan/

Upcoming Art Show from ICS Alum Janet Read

Painter and ICS Alumna Janet Read would like to announce her upcoming show Travelling Mercies in the North Gallery of the Propeller Gallery in Toronto. The show runs from October 17 to November 4. The artist is hosting an Opening Reception on Saturday October 20, 1pm-4pm. Below is a statement from Janet regarding the show:

Travelling Mercies is a show of works created from travels over the past few years in China, Ireland, the Bruce Peninsula and my own backyard of Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. Light over water is a constant theme as well as visual language developed in response to these journeys. The experience of being in the natural world animates my work. Saturated colour informs these works on paper, vellum, canvas and birch panel.

I work with the natural environment as a catalyst for mark-making in the form of painting. Volatile yet radiant forms of light over water inform the work. Playful visual language is evident in small works on paper and duralar.

Janet Read: dawn rise, 40x40, oil and cold wax on birch panel

Janet Read: april sky, 40x40, oil and cold wax on birch panel

Janet Read: bloom, 9x9 inches, oil on Arches paper

To see the show, you can visit Propeller Gallery at the following address:

30 Abell St. Toronto,ON (just south of Queen, east of Dufferin) 

Hours: Wed-Sat. 12-6 pm, Sunday, 12-5 pm

www.propellerctr.com

phone: 416-504-7142

You can also visit Janet's website to see more of her work here: www.janet-read.com.

Richard Middleton Organizing Conference in Rochester

On October 20-21, Northeastern Seminary will be holding a theology conference on its campus in Rochester, NY, co-sponsored with the Canadian-American Theological Association. The plenary speaker will be Richard Mouw and there will be about three dozen academic papers presented on the conference theme: "Evangelical Theology: New Challenges, New Opportunities."

Here is the link for the conference: https://www.nes.edu/calendar/theology-conference/

Alumnus Adam Smith accepts position in Iowa

ICS alumnus (2006) Adam Smith has just accepted a faculty position, after finishing a PhD in Politics at Brandeis. This fall he will be starting as Assistant Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Dubuque, in Iowa.

Adam Smith in Iowa

ICS alumnus Adam Smith (2006) has just accepted a faculty position, after finishing his PhD in Politics at Brandeis. This fall he will be starting as Assistant Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Dubuque, in Iowa.

Richard Middleton Speaking Tour

ICS Alumnus Richard Middleton will be in the UK from April 20 through May 4, speaking at a variety of venues (at least ten), all organized by the the reformational organization called Thinking Faith Network, in Leeds (previously known as WYSOCS). One of the venues (St. Andrews) will be hosted by Tom Wright, and one at the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge by Jonathan Chaplin. Richard's speaking schedule is available online.

Dan Jesse in South Carolina

Dan Jesse (MA, 2008) will be presenting a paper entitled "An Invitation to Sorrow -- Saturating our Liturgy With Sadness" at the 2017 Meeting of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology at Furman University (March 23-24).

Dr Tricia Van Dyk: Not Just Cause and Effect

Dr. Tricia Van Dyk will have an essay published in the journal Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, in a special issue on the work of Martha Nussbaum, a well-known American philosopher. The essay, titled “Not Just Cause and Effect: Resituating Martha Nussbaum's Defense of Novels as Moral Philosophy in a Hermeneutical Framework,” stems from Tricia’s PhD dissertation at ICS and the VU University Amsterdam. Tricia and her husband Benjamin Groenewold and their two children live in Lithuania, where Tricia and Benjamin teach philosophy at LCC International University.

Allyson Carr's New Book

ICS PhD alumna Allyson Carr has just received notification that Palgrave Publishing has awarded her a contract to publish a much revised version of her ICS 2012 PhD thesis under the title: Story and Philosophy for Social Change in Medieval and Postmodern Writing: Reading for Change.

The book takes up the work of Christine de Pizan, Luce Irigaray and Allyson's own very deep distillation of the philosophical work of Hans-Georg Gadamer to explore the work of fiction within philosophy. This is a wonderful testament to the hard work and perseverance of Allyson and at the same time to the quality of work done by ICS PhD candidates.

Ruthanne Crapo Presenting Papers

ICS Alumna Ruthanne Crapo is at the Department of Philosophy at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Last June Ruthanne traveled to Bristol, UK to an invited workshop with her dissertation figure, Luce Irigaray. She presented with the other workshop attendants on the following: “Practicing an Irigarayan Ethic: Animal Welfare and Ecological Feminism – Extending the Work of Luce Irigaray.”

She has also received an invitation to present next March at the American Philosophical Association Midwest Regional Conference at the Radical Philosophy Association’s panel. She will be co-presenting with a colleague and two students and their title is as follows: “Decolonizing Philosophy: Subaltern Orality and Theories of Justice.”

Janet Read's Art Exhibition

ICS Alumna Janet Read's new exhibition titled Ways of Cloud and Water will be held at Rebecca Gallery, 317 Harbord St., Toronto.

The opening is on Saturday October 15 from 2-5 pm, and her works will be on display until November 12.For more information, visit Rebecca Gallery.