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Professors Joseph Lawrence of the philosophy department
and Joanna Ziegler of the visual arts department have been
awarded a Contemplative Practice Fellowship for their proposed
interdisciplinary
sequence entitled "Contemplative Practice and the Practice of the Arts: East
and West."
The Contemplative Practice Fellowships
program was conceived by the Center of the Contemplative
Mind in Society. It is funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation
and the Fetzer Institute and is administrated by the American
Council of Learned Societies. The goal of the program is
to provide opportunities for faculty to develop curriculum
that includes and encourages the study of contemplation.
Lawrence will teach the course "Contemplative
Practice: East and West," which will explore parallels between
the educational program of Plato's Republic and the systems
of yogas outlined in the Bhagavad Gita. In conjuntion with
the class, students will receive instruction from a dharma
teacher at the Providence (R.I.) Zen center and will have
the opportunity to participate in a weekend retreat of Zen
Meditation, co-hosted by Zen Master Dae Kwang and Father
Kevin Hunt, OCSO.
Ziegler's course, "The Arts in
the West," will explore the thesis that Western practitioners
of music, acting, studio art, and dance routinely engage
in contemplative practice. The course will culminate in a
four-day Ignatian retreat, led by the Rev. Brian Linnane,
S.J.
Following the completion of the
sequence, Lawrence and Ziegler plan to publish an article
on the philosophical and pedagogical implications of the
project.
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