From its inception, the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts at Valparaiso University has conducted a weekly colloquium on the general topic of Christianity and the  Academic Vocation.  The makeup of the colloquium membership has changed over the years but the Lilly Fellows who have always comprised the conversational core and their mentors  have also been in regular attendance. A variety of senior fellows have led the Colloquium and been responsible for preparing a syllabus of readings.  To see past Colloquium  syllabi, participants, and leaders, click here.

The current syllabus, participants, and leaders are:

2014 - 2015 Colloquium:

Mel Piehl, Senior Fellow

Participants:           

Mel Piehl, senior fellow                    

Joe Creech, LFP program director                     

Ian Clausen, second-year fellow                         

James Old, editor, The Cresset                  

Kate Steiner, second-year fellow                  

Lisa Driver, mentor               

Jennifer Illig, first-year fellow                     

Peter Kanelos, mentor                    

Kenny Pearce, first-year fellow                  

Mary Beth Fraser Connolly, LFP asst. director                    

Josh Kercsmar, first-year fellow                  

Sandra Visser, mentor (present second semester)

Fall 2014:  

• Babette’s Feast, Film, 1987
   
• Michael Beaty, “Creating Communities of Learning,” The Cresset, Special Edition,  2014.
   
• Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is and Should Be, Princeton University Press, 2012, Preface, Introduction, and chapters 1 and 2.
   
• Margot Fassler, “Composer and Dramatist: Melodious Singing and the Freshness of Remorse,” in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and her World, Barbara  Newman, ed., University of California Press, 1998.
   
• Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time.”
   
• Hildegard of Bingen, “The Play of Virtues,” in Nine Medieval Latin Plays, trans. By Peter Dronke, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
   
• Thomas A. (Tal) Howard, ed., The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue with Mark Noll and James Turner, Brazos Press, 2008.
   
• Kathleen Norris, Cloister Walk, Riverhead Books, 1997; and Amazing Grace, Riverhead Books, 1999.
   
• Stephanie Paulsell “Writing as a Spiritual Discipline” in The Scope of our Art, L. Gregory Jones and Stephanie Paulsell, eds., Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,  2001.
   
• Mel Piehl, “Exiles’ Return,” The Cresset, Special Edition, 2014.  
   
• Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Ignatius Press, 2009.
   
• Marilynne Robinson, “Psalm Eight,” in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, Picador, Reprint edition, 2005.
   
• Mark Schwehn, “Lutheranism and the Future of the University,” The Cresset  Vol LXXIII, No. 2 (Advent-Christmas 2009), 6-14.
   
• Simone Weil, “The Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” in Waiting for God, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009.

Spring 2015:  

• Samuel Beckett, “Casconado,” “Play,” “Not I,” “Quad,” “Come and Go,” “Footfalls,” and “What Where,” The Collected Shorter Plays Beckett, Grove Press, 2010.
   
• Flannery O'Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970; and “The Enduring Chill,” The  Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reissue edition, 1971.
   
• Oliver O’Donovan, “Moral Communication,” Self, World, and Time; Ethics as Theology, Volume I, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013;  and “Possessing Wisdom,” The World in Small Boats, Sermons from Oxford, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009.
   
• Mark Schwehn and Dorothy Bass, eds., Leading Lives that Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006, Selections:  Bonnie Miller-McLemore, “Generativity Crises of My Own”; Abigail Zuger, “Defining a Doctor”; Martha Nussbaum, “interview by Bill Moyers” and Mary Catherine Bateson, “Composing a  Life Story.”
   
• Tobias Wolff, “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs” and “Bullet in the Brain,” in Our Story Begins: New and Selected  Stories, Vintage, 2009.