Cath Imagination: TheoCulture

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will examine the rich history of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the relationship between literary authors and the theologians who shaped them. In addition to exploring philosophical and theological underpinnings in the literary work, as a way of illuminating our understanding of it, we also will consider how the literary work helps us understand the points the philosophers and theologians are making. Throughout the course, students will come to appreciate how literature, culture, and the arts dialogue with Catholic theology and transcendent theological truths to bring forth beauty and meaning. This course will aim to deepen our understanding of the word “Catholic”: through examination of literature, philosophy, and theology, we will see how the Catholic faith describes the reality in which we live and how it can inform every valence of life, from poetry to paintings to the pressing questions of our modern age. The course will alternate between theology/philosophy and literature to form a paired conversation. These paired conversations will include thinkers like Plato & JRR Tolkien, St. Thomas Aquinas & Dante, St. Bonaventure & Gerard Manley Hopkins, Julian of Norwich & T.S. Eliot, and St. Edith Stein & Flannery O’Connor. For our theologians and philosophers, there will be select materials from their thoughts. For our literary authors, there will be a selection of poetry or one of their novels, as well as short critical works to supplement our reading.