ENVISIONING GRACE: THE SACRAMENTAL IMAGINATION IN LITERATURE AND FILM


The 2009-2010 season at the Siena Center celebrates and explores the compelling vision of writers and filmmakers in whose art “something more, a sense of the abiding presence of God in the things of this world is made manifest.” These artists see that all of creation, from the most ordinary—water, oil, bread—to the most unlikely—the stranger, the enemy, the cross—can be revelatory of Divine Love. This simple yet profound vision of life is often called “the sacramental imagination.” By studying these great works of fiction, poetry and cinema, we hope to fathom again and anew the unfathomable grace at the heart of our own stories.

Fall 2009

Spring 2010

 



International Film Festival

September 14 - 17, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Bluhm Lecture Hall, Parmer Hall, Main Campus
Admission is $5 per film or $10 for the entire festival – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

This four-night festival exploring the theme of “sacramental imagination” in international films is co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature.

  • Monday, September 14 Babettes gæstebud (Babette's Feast, Danish, 1987) with Sr. Kate Dooley, OP and Dr. Richard Calabrese
  • Tuesday, September 15 Ponette (Ponette, French, 1996) with Dr. Laura Burch and Dr. Elizabeth Jeep
  • Wednesday, September 16 El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth, Spanish, 2006) with Dr. Lisa Petrov
  • Thursday, September 17 La Notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars, Italian, 1982) with Dr. Veena Carlson

Back to top

Hidden in Plain Sight: Imagination and the Discovery of Grace

Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Lund Auditorium, Main Campus
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

Gertrud Mueller Nelson, artist, author, teacher and woman of faith, delivers the season’s inaugural lecture. God knew we could learn about God best through what we see and touch and feel and hear and taste. That's why God sent us Jesus—in a body like our own. Living among us, Jesus taught us by telling stories of tangible things and human situations. He knew that it takes our human imagination to recognize and respond to God’s presence in the world. This imagination is basic to our sacramental life: it gives us back the holiness of our human condition. Nelson is the author of Child of God, A Walk Through Our Church, To Dance With God and other books that celebrate the holy in the ordinary. Learn more about Nelson at www.gertrudnelson.com.

Back to top

Irony & Mystery: Writers of the South

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

11:30 a.m., Springer Suite, Rebecca Crown Library, Main Campus 
Chad Rohman, DU Professor and English Department Chair
and 
7:00 p.m., Auditorium, Priory Campus 
Dan Anderson, DU Visiting Professor of English, with response by Diane Kennedy, OP, DU Vice President for Mission and Ministry


Although the South has long been known as America’s “Bible Belt,” some of the most prominent Catholic writers of the 20th century were Southerners. The poems of Allen Tate, the novels of Walker Percy, and the short stories of Flannery O’Connor – to name perhaps the three most celebrated examples – all stemmed from this seemingly unlikely garden. At the heart of their work is a shared attempt to explore and reveal sacramental meaning in the social order, especially amid modern upheaval and transformation. They draw their combination of the ironic and the literal from the prophetic nature of Southern culture, which is embodied by such apparent contradictions and revelatory mysteries. We will look closely at aspects of the sacramental imagination in the works of these three writers, particularly in the context of Southern history and social change.


 Back to top

Dante’s Sacramental Imagination

Thursday, October 29, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Bluhm Lecture Hall, Parmer Hall, Main Campus
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

Sr. Clemente Davlin, OP will lead an exploration of one of history’s greatest poets, Dante, renowned for his sacramental imagination, that is, his ability to make the invisible visible, to select or create symbols of transcendent divine life that we feel we can touch, taste, hear, know corporally. They help us begin to penetrate the great mysteries that we know only by faith. The moral horror of sin becomes terrifyingly real in the Inferno; the interior journey by which we struggle to love in a divine way becomes palpable and visible in the Purgatorio; the perfection of charity in its rich variety dances and all but blinds us with light in the Paradiso. This talk will emphasize the Purgatorio, with many examples of Dante’s sacramental imagination. Tonia Triggiano, DU Assistant Professor of Italian, will offer a response to Sr. Clemente’s lecture.

Back to top

Mazzuchelli Lecture: Samuel Mazzuchelli: Model of Dominican Service

Thursday, November 5, 2009, 5:00 p.m.
Eloise Martin Recital Hall, Main Campus
Admission is free

Thomas McGonigle, OP, Director of the Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies, Providence College
Fr. Samuel’s Dominican ministry was a creative response to the needs of those whom he encountered. He spent his life as a missionary priest, pastor, teacher, and the founder of the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters. He built a frontier Church by establishing communities of faith, hope and love. By his preaching the word of God and his work as an educator, Fr. Samuel brought to those whom he served a vision of Christian life that gave them the strength to go forward and confidence that God’s merciful love would sustain them as they faced life’s daily challenges. In remembering Fr. Samuel we will consider together the demands of our own day for creativity in the service of truth and love. This event is co-sponsored by the Promoter of Mission Integration.

Back to top

Albertus Magnus Lecture: Deep Incarnation: Prepare for Astonishment

Thursday, November 19, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Auditorium, Priory Campus
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Theology, Fordham University, will deliver our annual lecture on the intersection of science and religion. Among the four ways theology can interact with science (conflict, contrast, contact, and confirmation--John Haught), this lecture works with the third option, which looks for ways in which scientific insight can shape theological understanding. Jesus Christ anchors Christian faith. How might knowledge of cosmic and biological evolution shed light on the wisdom that holds he is the incarnate Word of God? Tracing the narrative of his life, death, and resurrection, this lecture explores how the dialogue of faith with science opens Christology up to unsuspected depths. Johnson’s most recent book is Quest for the Living God.

Back to top

Advent Program: It’s a Wonderful Village: Bedford Falls as the Promised Land

Sunday, December 6, 2009, 1:00 p.m. Families welcome!
Monday, December 7, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Auditorium, Priory Campus
Admission is $5 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

View the Christmas Classic “It’s A Wonderful Life,” and explore its meaning in a fresh and challenging way with Patrick McCormick. Frank Capra’s film confronts us with a choice between the village of Bedford Falls and the slums of Pottersville. How does Capra’s tale of the creation and salvation of Bedford Falls echo God’s deliverance of the Hebrews to a Promised Land flowing with milk, honey, and justice, as well as Jesus’ proclamation of the good news of God’s Reign? And what do Capra’s film and these biblical stories have to say to us about the kinds of economic and political communities we are called to build today? McCormick teaches Christian ethics at Gonzaga University, and is the regular columnist on Culture and Christianity for U.S. Catholic magazine. This program is co-sponsored by Alumnae/i Relations, Kids and Sibs and Parents Weekend, and Campus Activities Board.

Back to top

Caritas et Veritas Lecture: What the Saints and Poets See (Maybe): Human Life as Sacrament

Thursday, January 28, 2010 / TBD

Mary Catherine Hilkert, OP, Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame - Dominican Spirituality and the Catholic Tradition emphasize that all of creation reflects the glory of God and in a particular way human beings are created in the image of God. What difference does it make to see and live human life as sacramental? This lecture will reflect on the question raised by Emily in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?"

Back to top

Prudential Penitence

Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Bluhm Lecture Hall, Parmer Hall, Main Campus
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

Robert Hanning, Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will examine the nature and implications of the medieval adaptation of aural confession by the Church, which required from her members exercise of ethical and rhetorical practice originating in classical antiquity. Then, he will explore some of the ways in which "prudential penitence" was appropriated by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio as a component of some of their most trenchant and most amusing fictions about both clergy and laity. His forthcoming book, Serious Play: Crises of Desire and Authority in the Poetry of Ovid, Chaucer, and Ariosto is to be published by the Columbia University Press. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Illinois Medieval Association conference.

Back to top

Lent Program: Smoke Signals: Fire and Reconciliation

Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
Auditorium, Priory Campus
Admission is $5 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

“Smoke Signals” is an award-winning film directed by Chris Eyre with screenplay by Sherman Alexie. It is the story of two young men, Victor and Thomas, with sharply divergent memories of childhood. After the death of Victor’s father, they take a cross-country journey that forever changes their lives. We are more than our worst act. Yet sometimes the wounds we give cause a lifetime of pain. As we travel with Victor and Thomas, we are invited to reconcile the difficult areas of our own lives. The film viewing and conversation will be guided by Kathy Heskin, DU Professor of Theology and Pastoral Ministry, and G. B. Starr-Bresette of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Bear Clan, Storyteller, Keeper of the Sacred Tradition of Pipe Carving, and researcher in language and human development.

Back to top

“What the blind beseeching eye has found”: Poetry and the Sacramental Imagination

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Auditorium, Priory Campus
Admission is $10 – DU students, faculty and staff admitted free

Paul Mariani, a poet and biographer of poets, will lead an evening of poetry and reflection on the sacramental possibilities of the poetic imagination. If the Incarnation has indeed occurred, then the evidence of God’s immanent presence ought to be capable of breaking in on us each day, the way air and light and sound do, if only we know what to look at and listen for. One thing the language of the Catholic poet attempts to do is to focus our eyes and tune our ears to the splendid grittiness of the physical as well as the splendor and consolation of the spiritual. Mariani’s most recent book is the highly acclaimed biography, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life (2008). Deaths and Transfigurations (2005) is Mariani’s own most recent volume of poetry.

Back to top

St. Catherine of Siena Lecture: Okapis by Moonlight: Sacramental Witness in Women's Writing

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
7:00 p.m. Prayer, Priory Chapel
7:30 p.m. Lecture, Priory Auditorium
Admission is Free

Barbara Kingsolver's stunning 1999 novel The Poisonwood Bible opens with a haunting scene of a struggling mother, alone and afraid, suddenly encountering an okapi at the edge of a stream. The elusive okapi--so rare it was once known as "the African unicorn" and supposed by many to be mythical--appears in its strangeness, its beauty, its silence, and is gone as suddenly as it appeared. So too the presence of God breaks in on our all-too-ordinary lives, in fleeting and breathtaking ways. Colleen Carpenter Cullinan, author of Redeeming The Story: Women, Suffering and Christ, will examine the ways in which several contemporary women writers direct our attention to the moments in which God's presence becomes manifest, and will also invite us to reflect on the sacramental imagination that shapes our ability to see the okapis in the forests and silences of our own lives. Cullinan is Assistant Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University and a Sinsinawa Dominican Associate.

Back to top

A Well-Told Tale

Sunday, May 16, 2010, 1:00 p.m.
Auditorium, Priory Campus
Admission is $20 per family

Children and their adult companions are invited to bring their imaginations for an afternoon of storytelling, creative activity and shared exploration of the grace-filled world of children’s literature. With teller and teacher guides, children will be led on a journey through a story encountering characters, events and message in fresh and interesting ways. Adult participants will grow in their understanding of how children’s books can enrich the life of faith for the whole family. The workshop will be followed by a Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, planned especially for families. Our leaders will be Janice Del Negro, gifted storyteller, expert in children’s and young adult literature and Assistant Professor of Library Science at Dominican University; and Therese Hogan, Associate Professor of Special Education and Director of Special Education Programs at Dominican University. This program is co-sponsored by the School of Education, GSLIS, and the Butler Children’s Literature Center.

Back to top