Lumen Christi Institute

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Open to current graduate students at the University of Chicago. Participants can come to whichever sessions they choose. Others interested in participating should contact Kristóf Oltvai at oltvai@uchicago.edu. Books and dinner will be provided. 

In what is perhaps the literary triumph of the European imagination, Dante Alighieri’s Commedia offers a vision of unforgettable cosmic and spiritual grandeur. Join us on this journey from the horrors of Hell, along Mount Purgatory’s breathtaking vistas, all the way into the bosom of the eternal Church Triumphant as our poet-protagonist discovers the meaning of sin, love, virtue, and redemption in conversation with his guides, Virgil and Beatrice.

This reading group will focus on two themes: 

(1) Dante as a moral pedagogue – as one who leads us from accepting the righteousness of God’s judgment; through pursuing virtue as a prerequisite for beatitude; to seeing, at last, even that ethical growth as a gift of grace

(2) The communion of saints as the fabric of the universe. 

SCHEDULE:

This group will meet on Mondays (beginning Oct 7th) from 6:00pm - 7:30pm over dinner. We will read 10 cantos before each meeting.

• Oct 7: Inferno 1-10

• Oct 21: Inferno 11-20

• Nov 4: Inferno 21-30

• Nov 18: Inferno 31-34, Purgatorio 1-6

• Nov 25 (TBD): Purgatorio 7-17

A copy of Dante's Divine Comedy will be provided to all participants. The reading may be picked up at Gavin House (1220 E 58th street) during buisness hours at the start of the fall quarter.

The University of Chicago is famous for its graduate student reading groups, in which students pursue their own intellectual interests among friends in an informal setting. The Lumen Christi Institute supports this endeavor by sponsoring a number of graduate student reading groups each quarter. LCI provides space, hospitality, and books.

Reading groups cover the whole spectrum of ideas. Texts do not need to be explicitly Catholic, though we follow St. Paul’s injunction to attend to whatever is true, noble, right, admirable, and lovely (Phil 4:8). Groups follow LCI's guiding principles, which...

• Affirm the intellectual life as good in itself

• Ask questions animated by the principle that “all knowledge forms one whole”

• Transcend the ideological / political divide (i.e., programs should not be partisan in nature)

• Welcome religious perspectives as part of the intellectual life (i.e., programs need not be theological in nature but conversations should be open to religious insights) 

• Nurture friendships, to support the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness (i.e., programs should have a social component)