Miracles in the Age of Reason (and other promising papers)

I've written here before about post-secular art history. Fortunately, this session trifecta at the upcoming College Art Association conference in Chicago confirms that it's not just me.

Thursday Feb. 13, 9:30 AM—12:00 PM
Religion and the Avant-Garde, Part I
Chair: Jeffrey Abt, Wayne State University
The Iconic Subconscious: Vassily Kandinsky and the “Russian Religious Renaissance” (
Maria Taroutina, Yale University)
Reinventing the Messiah: Isou’s Lettrism and the Avant-Garde as Religion in Postwar France
 (Marin Sarvé-Tarr, University of Chicago)
Disco Mystic: Doubt and Belief in Andy Warhol’s Shadows 
(Mark R. Loiacono, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Sacred Dissensus: The Latin American Neo-Avant-Garde (Re)reads the Bible
 (Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, University of Cambridge)
Discussant: Marcia G. Brennan, Rice University

Friday Feb. 14, 9:30 AM—12:00 PM
Religion and the Avant-Garde, Part II
Chair: Jeffrey Abt, Wayne State University
“And What Shall I Worship if Not the Enigma?” De Chirico’s Religion of Mystery
 (Anne Greeley, Indiana Wesleyan University)
The Color of Supreme Spirituality: Franz Marc and the Religion of Art 
(Nathan J. Timpano, University of Miami)
Useless Love: Matisse’s Vence Chapel and the Question of Religiosity in Modern Art
 (Joyce Cheng, University of Oregon)
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Meditations on Roman Catholic Spirituality in New Mexico
 (Randall C. Griffin, Southern Methodist University)
Discussant: Nancy Locke, Pennsylvania State University

Saturday Feb. 15, 2:30 PM—5:00 PM
Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
After the Secular: Art and Religion in the Eighteenth Century
Chair: Kevin M. Chua, Texas Tech University
The Dôme des Invalides: Sublimity, Religious Rhetoric, and Aesthetic Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century France
 (Aaron Wile, Harvard University)
Theism and Secularization in James Barry’s Society of Arts Murals 
(Daniel R. Guernsey, Florida International University)
The Saving Heart-Knowledge, and the Soaring Airy Head-Knowledge: Quaker Aesthetics as an Agent of Cure in Lunatic Asylum Design
 (Ann-Marie Akehurst, University of York)
The Mother of Light in New Spain 
(Bernard J. Cesarone, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Miracles in the Age of Reason (Hannah Williams, University of Oxford)

If only there was a symposium at the Art Institute the day before the conference begins to help set the tone.  Ah, but there is! Wait - and it's free?  And all you have to do is email drjamesromaine@gmail.com?  Miraculous!

Eating Beauty @ The Art Institute of Chicago (Feb 11)

Transubstantiation is alright I suppose, but why should words have all the fun?  How was medieval and Byzantine Eucharistic theology expressed visually?   Alongside ASCHA President James Romaine, I have organized a symposium to explore that question at the Art Institute of Chicago (details at the AIC site), and it's less than a month away.  Our keynote speaker for "Envisioning the Eucharist" is the University of Chicago's medieval art history superstar Aden Kumler, whose book Translating Truth got us going in this direction, to say nothing of the amazing Ann Astell.

Envisioning the Eucharist will be a nice way to extend the current Art and Appetite exhibition, and it certainly goes well with the AIC painting that would surely have cured Cameron's existential crisis, Maurice Denis' Easter mystery, where the Eucharist is dispensed by a tree.  Our conference also follows on the heels of an exciting Morgan Library exhibition on the Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art, the art historically rich publication of A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, and (eh hem), my paper that examines eucharistically-inspired Marian masculinity freshly posted at the U of C Div School.   But the symposium explores aspects that each of these venues did not.

Registration for this event, furthermore, is absolutely FREE with admission to the Art Institute (pretty rare for these kinds of things).  All you have to do is email drjamesromaine@gmail.com  The whole College Art Association will be in Chicago that week though, so please do so soon.  There's more to the Last Supper than Leonardo's literalism!

Course Evaluations for Sermon on the Mount

Professor was distant. I arrived late and could barely hear him. Didn't engage one on one. Not open to different learning styles.

Loved the course! Hot prof!

Arrogant teaching style. Not challenged to think for myself. He even openly criticized other profs. Messiah complex.

The instructor pandered to the lowest common denominator - "meek" and "poor."  As an AP student, I did not feel adequately stimulated.

Way too demanding for Gen Ed requirement. Prof expected us all to exceed best students in the class?! LOL. Not even my major!

Best prof ever! Loved it. Changing my major.

Told us not to worry about grade, and then told us that most people would fail. What?! Seriously?

Moralistic demands. Preachy. I didn't sign up for a lifestyle course. Teach the content!

Clearly had favorites (department administrator told me he only met privately with 12 students on regular basis).

Office hours jammed. My roommate had to physically GRAB his blazer to get noticed. I couldn't reach him (when I went I was told he was "away"). If I wanted a MOOC I'd have stayed in my pajamas.

Dr. Christ is AMAAAAAAZING!!!! 

Far too rigid reading requirements (something about "not an iota, not a dot, will perish"). Text should be changed - no summarizing boxes or glossary.  Way too long!  

Heard he won't even be here next semester. Gallilee U was just a stepping stone for him. Career, not student focused.

Hypermodern Oblivion

For what it's worth, a paper of mine so titled has been posted at the University of Chicago's Divinity School web forum.  Of particular interest might be the notion of the Marian male, inspired by Symeon the New Theologian.  I hope the paper has relevance to the issue of celibacy as well, but I had gone on long enough as it was.  What better way to celebrate the week following the feast of the Christ's circumcision?