IQ 1: Introducing the Inklings Project
Inklings Quarterly
November 16, 2023
What is the Inklings Project?
Under the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute, the Inklings Project is an inter-collegiate initiative that invites people to pursue meaning and joy by entering into the world of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings.
The idea for the project was planted at Brown University. Over a decade ago, Dr. Timothy Flanigan, a physician and professor at Brown’s medical school, proposed he teach an entirely new course: an undergraduate seminar on C. S. Lewis. He titled it, “Beyond Narnia: The Literature of C. S. Lewis."
On the first day of class, Dr. Flanigan was surprised to find the room packed full of students, ready to dive into the literature of C. S. Lewis with a medical doctor. He remembers remarking, "The only thing wilder than me teaching this course, is you all sitting here ready to take it!"
Today, the course is one of the most beloved at Brown: it has expanded into various sections, now taught by three medical professors. Students from all backgrounds and academic disciplines take the "Narnia course," finding themselves immersed in a variety of works, from philosophical writings to fantastical fiction. The course provides a space for meaningful dialogue and genuine connection––and is great fun for those involved.
Inspired by the success of this course at Brown, the Inklings Project was founded to encourage and support faculty who hope to provide an Inklings-related course on their own university campuses. It does so primarily through offering a fellowship opportunity to faculty who currently teach or wish to teach the works of the Inklings. Selected faculty are named Inklings Project Fellows and are awarded a grant, along with support and resources for the creation and refining of an Inklings-related course. Furthermore, Fellows join a rich community of Inklings scholars and are invited to an annual gathering to share and strengthen their Inklings-related teaching endeavors.
If you would like to read more about the Inklings Project, the Inklings Project Fellowship, or our team, visit www.inklingsproject.org.
AY23-24 Inklings Project Fellows
We are thrilled to introduce our inaugural group of Inklings Project Fellows! Drawn from twelve different colleges/universities, this group of faculty is teaching the works of the Inklings in creative, joyful, and engaging ways. You can read more about our Fellows and their courses in the “Fellow Spotlights” section of the newsletter, where we will feature a couple of our wonderful Fellows in each Inklings Quarterly.
From a Fellow
Dr. Richard Russell | Teaching the Oxford Christians at Baylor University
I have been teaching at Baylor University since 2001, and shortly after I arrived in Waco, I was intrigued to hear of a summer study abroad course we offered at Christ Church, Oxford University. Founded by a dear former colleague, Wendy Allman, the Baylor in Oxford program was centered upon a course called “The Oxford Christians.” What could I offer? I scrambled, reading back through Lewis, Tolkien, and beginning to read seriously Charles Williams, who was so important to Lewis. What I came up with in those early years was an abbreviated version of the much fuller semester-long course I try to teach at least every other year now. We read Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” then as now, the first reading for the course and an essential one. That essay sets the stage for all that follows, and Tolkien’s insistence on redefining the fairy story has been hugely influential for not just his generation but for others who have followed, including such authors as Nobel Prize writer Kazuo Ishiguro, who has recently admitted that such contemporary classics as his The Remains of the Day are indebted to Tolkien’s redefinition of fantasy. Then we read The Hobbit and “Leaf by Niggle,” and even bits of Farmer Giles of Ham. After that, we read Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce (I was too intimidated at the time to tackle his greatest fictional work, Till We Have Faces), along with his great wartime sermons, “The Weight of Glory” and “Learning in War-time.” We concluded with brief excerpts from Williams’s essays on co-inherence and his last, perhaps greatest novel, All Hallows’ Eve. We made the all-important trip to Lewis’s long-time home, The Kilns, and also had an outing to a favorite Inklings haunt, The Bird and the Baby, the colloquial name of the Eagle and Child pub.
But after teaching versions of this course four times for Baylor in Oxford (2003, 2004, 2011, and 2016), I begin to yearn to teach a semester-long course on these great writers. My colleague Ralph Wood had long taught Oxford Christians during the regular academic year (and would start with Chesterton and George MacDonald, I believe, before moving on to Lewis and Tolkien). In the fall of 2017, I finally taught a full-length course on the Inklings, beginning with my friend Diana Glyer’s abridged account of the Inklings, Bandersnatch, drawn from her larger study, The Company They Keep. Ralph insisted that I teach all of The Lord of the Rings, and he was right, of course. It’s still daunting to take up each time, but now it’s become more familiar yet is still magisterial. I taught the course again in the fall of 2021 and another version of it in the fall of 2022. I plan to offer it again the fall of 2024, and I have even spearheaded a white paper initiative to offer an undergraduate certificate in the Oxford Christians across Honors, English, Philosophy, and Political Science.
I have grown less and less fond of Charles Williams, although I still introduce his important idea of co-inherence, and I have gradually moved from focusing the last third of the course on his work (Fall 2017), to splitting the last third of the course between Williams and Sayers (Fall 2021), to featuring Sayers alone for that portion of the class. This decision has come about in part because of my sheer delight in Sayers’s prose and wit in both her sparkling essays and mystery novels, but also in her insistence on treating the Christian dogma as essentially dramatic, as one of her essays has it. Lewis likened Sayers to a “high wind,” and my students and I have enjoyed the bracing gusts of Sayers’s writing blowing through the end of the course. Since Gina Delfano’s lovely short study, Dorothy and Jack, appeared a few years ago, I have used it as a bridge between Lewis and Sayers, which helps us ponder their relationship and understand Sayers’s greatness and early, important encouragement of Lewis’s forays into non-academic writing.
Going forward, I am pondering how to incorporate into my course Lewis’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy, and then a fairly new work by Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford, an account of her journey into the Christian faith during her time at Oxford. This Inklings Fellowship is essential to helping me make such decisions as I reimagine my course, which I hope to teach for many years to come.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Richard Rankin Russell
Professor of English and Graduate Program Director
Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year, 2023
Baylor University
Fellow Spotlight
Dr. Michael Burns | C. S. Lewis in Biology
One of this year’s Inklings Project Fellows is Dr. Michael Burns, an Associate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Burns is a cancer researcher by training, with broad expertise in molecular genetics, genomics, metagenomics, and bioinformatics. Along with a colleague in Loyola’s philosophy department, Dr. Joseph Vukov, Dr. Burns has crafted an educational experience that leverages the story-telling power of science fiction in their co-taught course “Philosophy and Biology for the Future.”
The general purpose of the course is to introduce students to relevant scientific concepts while exploring the relationship of these scientific breakthroughs to humans as individuals, as a society, and as a civilization. This is accomplished through the dynamic instructing team: Dr. Burns identifies and presents scientific findings and walks students through the fine details of how they operate; Dr. Vukov then contextualizes these scientific elements within ethical, moral, and religious frameworks. The importance of this integration is to urge students not only to ask, “How does this thing work?” but to further inquire,“Why does this matter in my life and in society at large?”
The instructors find it effective to use science fiction to introduce course content, and for the first time this fall semester, C. S. Lewis made an appearance. They assigned the first novel in Lewis’ Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, using it as a starting point to discuss topics such as evolution, eugenics, and genetic engineering, as well as the different ethical frameworks presented in the work. They even created a hands-on activity where the students role-play as Weston to make a genocidal bioweapon (using actual terrifying technology that exists) to see if there is any possible way that such a weapon could be ethically justified.
“Philosophy and Biology for the Future” has proven to be a notably successful course, one that hopes to inspire more dynamic and interdisciplinary courses like it. If you’d like to learn more about the course, you can check out their course website, which includes the syllabus, here: https://www.scienceforhumans.com/the-course
Quarterly Highlights
Inspiration: “And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?” — C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
Resource: The Pints with Jack podcast and their “C. S. Lewis Books” page, where you can find notes, commentaries, and resources for Lewis’ books…For more resources, visit the Inklings Project Resources page
Event: The Hansen Lectures at the Marion E. Wade Center titled "The Way of Dante: Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and C.S. Lewis Journey through The Divine Comedy” taking place on January 18, February 15, and March 14, 2024 at 7pm CT.
The lectures will be recorded and uploaded to the Wade Center's YouTube channel.
Interested in supporting the Inklings Project?
The Inklings Project exists because of the generosity of individuals. To make a one-time or recurring donation to the Inklings Project, please visit giving.nd.edu/inklings, or call 574-631-7164.
The University of Notre Dame is a 501(c) (3) tax exempt nonprofit corporation.
For past issues of the Inklings Quarterly, visit www.inklingsproject.org/quarterly.
