DESCRIPTION: This course will offer students the opportunity to explore the complex dynamics of contemporary urban life by exegeting the medieval city of Orvieto as a means of understanding and thinking theologically about architecture, space, and urban living in the twenty-first century. The pre-modern , modern and postmodern sensibilities of the medieval city in the postmodern world will provide the backdrop for reflection on the theological challenges and possibilities contemporary urban environments hold.

SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND MINISTRY: The church of the twenty-first century must broker the immense socio-cultural shifts heralded by the dawn of the digital age. New technologies are re-shaping how we understand ourselves and how we shape our environments. This course will offer the student opportunity to learn how to "read" a city and develop theological and missional strategies rooted in a clear understanding of the layers of meaning and symbolism inherent in city living.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: The student will develop a basic theology of urban space; understand the ways in which ideas get embedded in the environments we create; exegete the implications of global digital culture on urban life. Students will learn the basic skills of exegeting a city, understand the role of visual aesthetics, and develop frameworks for thinking theologically about contemporary urban living.

COURSE FORMAT: The course will comprise lectures, built primarily around the essays contained in Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality (principally chapters 2 and 4), cultural exegesis of the city of Orvieto by lecture and field research and field trips to various landmarks and sites of cultural and theological import.

REQUIRED READING:

Castells, Manuel. The Information City. Wiley-Balckwell, 1992. (416 pp.)

De Botton, Alain. The Architecture of Happiness. Pantheon, 2006. (288 pp.)

Eco, Umberto. Travels In Hyperreality. Harvest Books, 1990. (324 pp.)

Inge, John. A Christian Theology of Place. Ashgate, 2003. (chapter 4, pp. 91-122)

Mayernik, Mavid. Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections on Renaissance Italy. Westview, 2003. (288 pp.)

Ward, Graham. Cities of God. Routledge, 2001. (336 pp.)

Augustine. City of God. Random House, 1958. (551 pp.)

Kieckhefer, Richard. Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkley. Oxford University Press, 2004. (372 pp.)

Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. Norton and Company, 1999. (282 pp.)

1. Complete all assigned reading (20%).

2. Two-page reviews of Castells and Eco (30%).

3. A 15-20 page paper exegeting the student's own urban space in comparison with Orvieto (50%).

Read Eco chapters 2 and 4 before start of intensive.