Peter O'Leary

In 1865, Emily Dickinson wrote, ¿Split the Lark ¿ and you¿ll find the Music.¿ Upon seeing his first peregrine falcon, J.A. Baker remarked, ¿I have seen many since then, but none has excelled it for speed and fire of spirit. For ten years I spent all my winters searching for that restless brilliance, for the sudden passion and violence that peregrines flush from the sky.¿ This course explores the meaning of birds in some of the world¿s literature. We will focus on the observation of birds as well as the metaphorical significations of birds. And we will consider what disasters birds augur in the time of climate crisis. We will look at mysticism, poetry, memoir, and description. And birds, of course. Readings include The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-din Attar, The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, The Redstart by John Buxton, The Warbler Road by Merrill Gilfillan, For the Good of All, Do Not Destroy the Birds by Jennifer Moxley, and poetry by Dickinson, Whitman, Robert Duncan, Robinson Jeffers, Sylvia Legris, Lesley Harrison, and Tom Pickard. Students will also make use of David Allen Sibley¿s Field Guide to the Birds of the Eastern United States. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

Esotericism refers both to a field of knowledge hidden from common view and a moral reality suggesting secrecy, occultism, danger, conspiracy, and vast quantities of arcane lore and revelation. This course introduces students to a basic theory of esotericism in relation to the active production of art in the context of the spiritual. The spiritual has a living context in art, visible in various forms of the visionary, the sacred, and the sublime, for which the doctrines of different esoteric disciplines, such as Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Astrology, and Alchemy, can serve as keys.

The catalogue 'The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985' will serve as a master resource for this course, as well as selected readings from artists, scholars, and researchers, including Marsilio Ficino, Carl Jung, Antoine Faivre, Jeffrey Kripal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Arthur Versluis, Hermes Trismegistus, Evelyn Underhill, H.P Blavatsky, and Richard Tarnas, to name a few.

Students will generate visual art on the themes of the class during the studio portion of the course; for the symposium portion of the course, they will produce several short informative essays about figures from the history of Western Esotericism, as well as a final research project, in the form of a personal essay, work of creative fiction, poetry, or drama, or an advanced horoscope, to be presented to the class.

A monolith manifests in orbit around Jupiter, emitting a signal. A beacon? A winter-bound planet¿s denizens are androgynous with powerful predictive powers. An aberration? Space travel is enabled by the ingestion of enormous quantities of a geriatric spice a messianic figure suddenly learns to manipulate. A drug trip?! Among popular genres, science fiction is the riskiest conceptually and among the trickiest to master. Because of its relative narrative freedom, science fiction has been a place for some of the wildest, most outlandish, yet frequently astute speculation on the experience of religion that can be found in all modern literature. In this course, you¿ll read some novels (by William Gibson, Frank Herbert, and Ursula K. LeGuin), short stories, (by Ted Chiang, Arthur C. Clarke, and Raccoona Sheldon), and view some films (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Close Encounters), and study the work of some theorists of religion (Freud, Jung, Le¿vi-Strauss, and Eliade). Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

A monolith manifests in orbit around Jupiter, emitting a signal. A beacon? A winter-bound planet¿s denizens are androgynous with powerful predictive powers. An aberration? Space travel is enabled by the ingestion of enormous quantities of a geriatric spice a messianic figure suddenly learns to manipulate. A drug trip?! Among popular genres, science fiction is the riskiest conceptually and among the trickiest to master. Because of its relative narrative freedom, science fiction has been a place for some of the wildest, most outlandish, yet frequently astute speculation on the experience of religion that can be found in all modern literature. In this course, you¿ll read some novels (by William Gibson, Frank Herbert, and Ursula K. LeGuin), short stories, (by Ted Chiang, Arthur C. Clarke, and Raccoona Sheldon), and view some films (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Close Encounters), and study the work of some theorists of religion (Freud, Jung, Le¿vi-Strauss, and Eliade). Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

Islam is in the news these days, with a frequency that leads more often to confusion than to clarity. From newscasters, to pundits, to politicians, basic knowledge of the features of Islam are inconsistent and uninformed. The focus of this course involves four areas: 1) The Life of Muhammed & the Revelation of the Quran, 2) historical distinctions & movements (between Sunni & Shi'i, for instance), 3) Islamic mysticism (Sufism & Ismailism), 4) Islamic arts in relation to theology (calligraphy, architecture, Quranic recitation). The goal of the course is to give students a cultural and theological grounding in the history, arts, and sciences of Islam.

The myth of Orpheus covers impressive range: the greatest poet and musician of the mythical age, he married Eurydice after voyaging with the Argonauts, his song capable of taming wild nature, drawing listening animals into his aura, only to have his beloved slain by a serpent's bite. From there, he charmed his way into the underworld with his lyrics, gaining permission to bring Eurydice back to the world on the condition he not look back, one that he couldn't abide. In his grief, he sang mournful chants and praised Apollo above all, inspiring the wrath of Dionysus, who compelled his Maenads to thrash him to pieces. The legend concludes with Orpheus' head bobbing down the Hebrus River, to wash finally to a cave on Lesbos, where it prophesied for ages until quieted by a command from Apollo. But was Orpheus' voice ever truly silenced? There are four kinds of Orphic poets: the poet who sings plaintive songs of love; the poet who sings the glories of nature; the poet who, having visited the underworld, reveals its magic and mysteries; and the poet-prophet. In this poetry workshop, we will examine the works of seven modern poets who exemplify one or more of these traits: Mina Loy (love and mysteries); Lorine Niedecker and Ed Roberson (nature); Ronald Johnson and Cody-Rose Clevidence (nature, mysteries, prophecy); and Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Duncan (all four traits). In addition to modeling their work after these poets, students will fashion their own version of the Orpheus myth.