Please note that this event will be held off-site at UBC’s Sage Bistro Lecture Hall

In this lecture, the Rev. Dr. Ben Quash (King's College London) will ask what role shared delight in the arts might play in helping us to tread a path back toward public truth and the common good. At a time when notions of shared truth, goodness, and beauty are under threat and suspicion, it is essential that our common humanity find expression in areas illustrating our shared longings across religious or ideological divides. The arts are indispensable toward this end.

Dr. Evan Freeman, Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC Chair in Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, will offer a response to Quash's lecture.

This lecture is free and open to anyone interested in the arts and human identity.

For more information, you may contact The Houston Centre at [email protected] or visit their website. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Ben Quash is Professor of Christianity and the Arts at King's College London. Quash grew up in County Durham and Monmouthshire. He studied English as an undergraduate at Cambridge, and then theology as a second degree, while in training for ordination at Westcott House. His doctoral work on the theological dramatic theory of Hans Urs von Balthasar combined these literary and theological interests. He was Chaplain and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and a lecturer in the Cambridge Theological Federation from 1996 to 1999. He then returned to Peterhouse as Dean and Fellow, where he served until he came to King’s as its first Professor of Christianity and the Arts in 2007.

From 2004 to 2007 Quash was also Academic Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, developing research and public education programs in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their interrelations—establishing the practice and theory of Scriptural Reasoning.

Dr. Evan Freeman is Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC Chair in Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. He studies art and ritual of the Byzantine Empire and cross-cultural interactions in the wider medieval world. He completed his PhD in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University and has held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Before joining the Department of Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University, he taught at Queens College, City University of New York, and Portland State University. He has produced videos, essays, an edited volume, and other open educational resources for Smarthistory, Khan Academy, and other digital and public humanities projects. His research focuses on Byzantine ritual objects, mobility, monumental church art, and materiality.

ABOUT THE HOUSTON CENTRE

The Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good is a five-year initiative of Regent College, grounded in Dr. James M. Houston’s comprehensive vision of integrative scholarship. Its main task is to foster interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue on the central question of the late-modern world: what does it mean to be human?

Inviting a range of philosophical perspectives through collaboration with the University of British Columbia and other institutions, the Centre explores a holistic understanding of humanity that accounts for the unique social, political, and theological issues of our time. Comprising a community of leading scholars, the Centre generates dialogue across disciplines—theology, philosophy, biology, cognitive science, political studies, and more—in order to navigate the mystery of the human person.

Through public lectures, seminars, and a variety of publications, the Houston Centre helps others engage theological questions of humanity for the common good.