Fall 2022 Course Descriptions 

 

Duke Divinity has a diverse selection of courses available.
Below are the courses designed into the DITA Certificate for this term.

 

Hybrid

 

XTIANTHE 773 “Introduction to Theology and the Arts” – Daniel Train

This course aims to provide an introduction to the ways in which theology can enrich and be enriched by the arts. Covering a wide range -including literature, painting, film, music and drama -it seeks to show how central theological doctrines can transform the way we perceive and make art, and how the arts in turn can deepen our understanding of some of the central tenets of the Christian faith.

 

Residential

 

XTIANTHE848 “CHARITY:AUQ/LANGLAND/MILTON” – David Aers

This course explores the theological virtue of Charity through two medieval versions and a version composed in the Reformation . Our versions are given to us by Thomas Aquinas, William Langland, and John Milton. The course consider both the forms this virtue takes, and the specific impediments each writer considers and explores Charity as a form of life in specific communities (church, polity, society) with their own impediments to the virtue, their own habitual sins. The course involves close engagement with primary texts across genres and is an exercise in diachronic thinking about Christian tradition.

 

XTIANTHE 872: “POETRY&/ASTHEOLOGY1″ – Thomas Pfau

This two-semester sequence explores the relationship between poetry and theology from 1850 to 2000. Readings will explore works of lyric poetry (by G. M. Hopkins, Paul Claudel, R. M. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Czeslaw Milosz, and Geoffrey Hill) in relation to issues in theological aesthetics, philosophical theology, and philosophy either contemporary to the authors or as part of their intellectual and spiritual inheritance and formation. PART I explores the poetry of Hopkins, Claudel and Rilke against their respective theological and intellectual background.

 

XTIANTHE 810 “Soren Kierkegaard” – Amy Laura Hall

Without prior knowledge of Kierkegaard or philosophy, this course offers engagement with primary texts drawn from the following works of Søren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Either/Or, Stages on Life’s Way, Philosophical Fragments, and Works of Love.

 

XTIANTHE 890.02 “Visual Art as Theology” – Jonathan Anderson

This is a course in visual theology, exploring the history of Christian art as a domain of Christian theological thinking through the centuries. Our approach will be to study works of visual art not as illustrating or translating theological texts into visual form but as theological “texts” in their own right— as theology conducted specifically in visual and spatial modes of thinking, amidst and alongside written and verbal theologies. The aim of this course is to learn how to “read” this kind of theology well, in partnership with our reading of other theological texts and commentaries, exploring and experimenting with how visual theology works as theology and how it might contribute to other modes and domains of theological study.