Teaching The Teachers; Forming Friendships in Pursuit of Truth.
Intensive Coursework in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition
Since 2008, the Lumen Christi Institute’s summer seminar program has offered intensive coursework and formation in the Catholic intellectual tradition. The seminars are designed to convey in one week the equivalent of a semester-long course, so that students can use the intellectual formation over the tenure of their own academic careers as teachers and researchers once they become future faculty. Students who have passed through the Lumen Christi Institute’s summer seminar program currently teach at Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Dallas, and many other institutions.
Summer Seminars
Led by senior scholars, these seminars provide crucial fellowship opportunities, as well as the support that Catholic students at secular universities need in their pursuit of truth. In addition to engaging with texts from the Catholic intellectual tradition, the camaraderie that develops among the students makes a lasting impact on their professional and personal lives.
Apply here Description: One of the most influential 20th century Catholic thinkers, René Girard transformed our understanding of culture, religion, and human desire. Through an intensive reading of Girard’s works, in conjunction with the fiction of the greatest writers, this five-day seminar will explore imitation, conflict, and scapegoating, connecting them to central themes of Christian theology. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought. Location and Format: This seminar will be held at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Students will meet twice daily during 2.5 hr sessions in seminar style lecture and discussion. Students will…
Apply here We are pleased to announce the fifth annual seminar on “Business and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer.” During the seminar, graduate students and faculty members in business schools will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought and apply them to their own field of research and teaching. This seminar aims at widening epistemological preconceptions and showing practical implications of Catholic social thought for business in a way that affirms the goodness of business directed toward the common good. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant business texts that show the path for principled entrepreneurship in…
Apply Here The seminar is co-presented by the Lonergan Institute. This graduate seminar is designed as an advanced introduction to the thought of Bernard Lonergan, SJ. The seminar will examine Lonergan’s approach to self-knowledge and “self-appropriation,” epistemology, and method in metaphysics and theology. The main text for the course will be Lonergan’s seminal Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Upon first publication in 1957, Insight was greeted by reviewers as “probably… one of the great philosophical treatises of the century,” “a profound book… evincing an extraordinary sense for the persistent significance of ancient and medieval thought in the light of…
Apply here Co-presented with the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. Dionysius the Areopagite is a figure who is as elusive as his prose is powerful. The course will involve a close reading of his entire corpus and situating his writings in the intellectual and historical context of the first millennium. We will further outline the indelible marks he leaves on subsequent Christian theology, liturgy, and the broader philosophical tradition. LOCATION AND FORMAT The seminar will be held at Sheptytsky House at the University of St. Michael’s College in the…
Apply here This seminar is an intensive week-long course in how to read, analyze, and discern the many themes in Augustine’s most ambitious and sprawling work. The City of God tells the history of two societies, and their respective origins, progress, and appointed ends. The story is engaged first from the evidence of profane history (I-XI) and then from the evidence of revelation (XII-XXII). In this seminar, participants will discuss how Augustine reckons with the crisis of the ancient and the human city, and whether it is possible to reconcile truth and authority across the competing domains of polity, religion,…
Apply here Now in its eight year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and junior faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought, starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts. This seminar is sponsored…