Dear Colleague,

I am writing to encourage you to apply to the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College and University Teachers entitled “Teaching the Reformation in a Pluralist Age.” Funded by the NEH, the institute will take place at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, at Calvin College in Grand Rapids , Michigan , from June 25 through July 13, inclusive.

I am excited about this opportunity to bring together a group of thirty faculty members from US colleges and universities for stimulating presentations on and discussions of current trends in Reformation studies and ways to link these trends to broader themes in world history. The institute is intended to provide participants with a solid grasp of current research on the Reformation, presented in an accessible form, adaptable for undergraduate instruction. Hence the aim is not to provide a three-week chronological survey of Reformation history. Instead, the approach will be thematic: first, visiting lecturers will focus on themes that help explain the Reformation's close connection to key themes of human history across cultures. For instance, the lectures on church and state in the Reformation will set the issue in the wider context of global struggles over the relative strength of spiritual versus temporal powers, including in the early modern Muslim empires, while the lecture on art and iconoclasm will consider the wider issues of images and their potency in cultures and faiths around the world. Second, presenters will make the most recent insights in the field of Reformation studies accessible to participants, and show them ways in which these insights can be communicated effectively in undergraduate classrooms.

The first week's lectures, on the theology of the Reformation, popular piety in the Lutheran context, and popular piety in the Catholic context will help participants find ways to teach complex concepts to undergraduates in accessible ways, by stressing the involvement of early modern lay-people across confessional boundaries in the shaping of both doctrine and religious practice. This institute intentionally includes the Catholic Reformation as one key aspect of the transformations of religious culture in the sixteeenth century, and considers the experience of Catholic communities at the time alongside, and not apart from or in reaction to the various Protestant movements for reform. A third focal point will be to familiarize participants with a range of primary sources (short texts in English, images, music, artifacts, etc.) that can be used by institute participants in their survey classes to help students understand the Reformation's significance and make connections with other topics they have studied. For instance, the sessions on women in the Reformation will focus on Catholic and Protestant women's experience, not only in Europe but also in the Americas , and will include primary sources from these women, including Marie de L'Incarnation ( Quebec ), Sor Juana de la Cruz ( Mexico ) and Argula von Grumbach ( Germany )

In my capacity as Director of the Meeter Center , I will lead the institute and lecture in some of the sessions. Instruction (a combination of lectures and seminar discussions) will also be provided by seven visiting lecturers, all of whom are currently teaching at the undergraduate level, and have personal experience of the challenges in making the Reformation understandable and relevant for undergraduate audiences: Dr Robin Barnes from Davidson College in North Carolina, Dr Ward Holder from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, Dr Henry Luttikhuizen from Calvin College, Dr Graeme Murdock from the University of Birmingham in England, Dr Charles Parker from Saint Louis University in Missouri, Dr Larissa Taylor from Colby College in Maine, and Dr Merry Wiesner-Hanks from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Each of these experts in turn will be present on campus and lecture on their specialty for one or two morning sessions during the three-week period, and will participate in the related afternoon seminar discussion for each topic. See below for the tentative schedule. The seminar will meet daily from Monday to Friday for a lecture and discussion with the visiting lecturer from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm, with a half-hour break for refreshments half-way through each morning. Three afternoons a week, from 1:45 to 4:30 pm, the group will meet in a seminar style, to discuss issues arising out of the assigned readings for the day and to examine the related primary sources. The afternoon sessions will also provide a particularly good forum for participants to make links between the themes presented in the lectures and their own knowledge of related themes in world history. One afternoon a week will be dedicated to participants' individual work on integrating the information learned into their own lecture outlines, to strengthen their future teaching . The other afternoon will be left free for participants to focus on the assigned readings. Lecture outlines and other teaching materials developed by participants will be circulated to the entire group by the end of the second week and will be discussed during the final week, during which three afternoons will be devoted to providing feedback on each other's materials.

Institute participants who are selected will receive a stipend of $2,400, payable in two installments: one half upon arrival and the other in the middle of the second week. Participants can use the stipend to cover travel, accommodation, and subsistence costs.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, preferably by email, with any questions.

Best wishes,

Karin Maag
Director, H. Henry Meeter Center
Calvin College