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WELCOME TO THE 50th ANNUAL SUMMER SEMINAR!
“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do." Walt Disney
When do the Seminars take place?
- SESSION I: June 22 – 28, 2025
- SESSION II: July 6 – 12, 2025
The Program
The Seminar will be housed in several locations across campus in 2025.
Each lecture described below is given on a single morning. After a break for refreshments, participants may join a further discussion of the main lecture or choose to attend a different presentation given by another faculty member.
Who comes to the Seminars?
We always have a lively group composed of alumni, friends of Sewanee, and those who are simply curious about this beautiful place. The only prerequisite is that you enjoy the flow of ideas and the company of interesting people. Some participants are quickly swept into active dialogue; others come to absorb and reflect.
Who teaches the Seminars?
We will be celebrating our 50th anniversary this summer with a group of outstanding speakers:
- Professor Kati Curts, Religious Studies
- Professor Bran Potter, Geology
- Professor Daniel Backlund, Theater & Dance
- Professor Alessia Martini, Italian Studies
- Professor Andrew Maginn, History
Click here to see this year's faculty.
The Week
- Sunday, afternoon:
- Arrive at Biehl Commons for check-in between 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. Central Time
- Opening reception at Biehl Commons 4:30 – 6:00 p.m. Introductions at 5:00 p.m.
- Monday–Friday mornings, 9 a.m.–noon: Seminars
- Monday–Friday afternoon and evenings: Optional programs and activities
- Friday late afternoon: Final reception and farewell dinner
- Saturday morning: Departure by 10 a.m.
The Daily Schedule
Mornings begin with a hearty breakfast at McClurg, followed by the main lecture of the day at 9 a.m. After a break for refreshments it is time for a choice: to discuss the main lecture topic or to join a new talk with a different professor. Thus, each morning includes opportunities to pursue two different subjects. Everyone hears the main lecture, then some pursue that subject for the rest of the morning while others jump into one of the “second talks.”
Afternoons and evenings are for more informal activities. We provide plenty of opportunities for hikes, visits to interesting local spots, film viewings, and other activities. Many participants mix these with their own forays into the library, into the sun, or into the luxury of unscheduled time. Use of duPont Library and the Fowler Sport and Fitness Center are included in the program.
Housing and Meals
Session I participants will live in Quintard Hall while Session II participants will be housed in Benedict Hall. Meals, with the exceptions of our opening reception and farewell dinner, will be at the University Dining Commons, McClurg Hall. The campus coffee house, named after Ted Stirling, the founder of the Sewanee Summer Seminar, is on the east side of the Bishop’s Common.
How much does it cost?
$700 for each adult participant (tuition, double room, shared bath, and meals)
$750 for each adult participant (tuition, single room, might be a shared bath if we are crowded, and meals)
$400 for tuition only, per person (no housing or meals)
$75 early arrival fee per day, per person
For tuition-only participants, meals are also available on an individual basis.
Remember: The Summer Conference Office charges early arrivals (Saturday after 2 p.m.) $75.00 per person, per night
How do I make a reservation?
Register online
A deposit of $100 reserves your place or send deposits and direct questions to:
Professor Bethel Seballos
Director, Sewanee Summer Seminar
The University of the South
735 University Avenue, Sewanee, TN 37383-1000
Email 931.598.1469
Sewanee Seminar Talks
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Primary Talks
Professor Alessia Martini - “An Italian Futurist in New York: American Urban Spaces in the Work of Fortunato Depero”
In the 1920s, Italian Futurist artists viewed New York as an ideal, nearly utopian city due to its modernity, grandeur, and dynamism. However, when Futurist Fortunato Depero moved to New York City in 1928 to engage with the latest mechanical and technological innovations and seek inspiration for his work, he realized that the metropolis was far from ideal. In this lecture, we will examine Depero’s artistic and literary journey in New York to reveal how his firsthand experiences in the United States prompted him to challenge Futurist ideology in his art. For my primary lecture on Futurism, I'd like students to read some short texts which will be provided before class: "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism," "Manifesto of Futurist Painting," and "Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto."
Professor Kati Curts - “How Ford Transformed Religion in America”
What does a motor company and its founder have to do with religion in America? A lot, it turns out. Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford’s efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, the Motor King was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world. This talk offers a religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, repositioning them within critical studies of religion and examining how Ford transformed American religion in the twentieth century.
Professor Andrew Maginn - “Sewanee Stories: Myths, Folklore and History”
How much do you know about the history of the University of the South? Is it just the major dates of the institution, or the famous students or faculty? We’ll learn about the lesser known multifaceted stories that make up this institution and individuals that provide an interesting perspective on its history. After the talk, stick around! Dr. Maginn will provide a tour of campus that highlights these uniquely Sewanee narratives. Readings will be provided to participants in advance.
Professor Bran Potter - “Deep Time on the Plateau”
Our understanding of the Cumberland Plateau’s geology has evolved in exciting ways since Ted Stirling founded the Summer Seminar fifty years ago. Which ancient environments are evident in the bedrock, and how was this landscape created? We’ll examine the modern understanding of the Plateau’s origins, along with a look at how the University’s physical, hydrologic, and geological settings have shaped its early and continuing relationship to the ground it occupies. We’ll also have an optional walk to support the formal presentation.
Professor Dan Backlund - “Making Space into Place”
We think of ‘making’ as fashioning materials into something, but really, we make a space into a place by our choices or by what we use the place for. We will explore how we all transform physical space into place and how this affects our moods, perceptions, and understandings, and then how designers, the architects of performance, manipulate elements in space to create the physical and psychological place of the story.
Second Talks
Professor Alessia Martini – “The Godfather Effect: How a Movie Made Italians Mainstream”
When Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was released in 1972, Italians in the United States could not have imagined how profoundly a movie could affect their ethnic group, for better or worse. While the film reinforced older stereotypes of Italians being criminals, it also helped Italians become less of a minority and gain access to mainstream America.
Professor Andrew Maginn - "The Real Bridgerton: Marie-Louise Christophe, a Black Queen in Nineteenth-Century England and Italy."
Netflix was inspired by the story, but it hasn't been truly told. Marie-Louise Coidavid (1778-1851) was a free woman of color in the French colonial town of Cap-Français when she caught the eye of an inn-keeper and veteran of the American Revolution, Henry Christophe. After a brief courtship, they married in the midst of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). By the end of the conflict, her husband had become King of the Kingdom of Haiti and ruled for fourteen years. After the Kingdom fell to rival powers, Marie and her daughters were exiled from their home, never to return again. Hear the epic tales of this traveling Queen as she navigated her new life in Great Britain and Italy. Readings will be provided to participants in advance.
Professor Kati Curts - “Silver, Scandal, and Spirituality on the American Frontier”
This talk offers a spiritual biography of Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor (1854-1935), a pioneering figure in American frontier history and an epic subject of early Hollywood film and Cold War opera. Baby Doe’s story is often told as one of scandalous love and redemptive privation. Her rise to fame as the beautiful, young ingénue and second wife of Senator Horace A.W. Tabor, the so-called “Silver King”, is typically eclipsed by her legendary fall into destitution in the wake of declining silver prices. This talk refocuses attention on Baby Doe’s later life, the period when she came to be known as an eccentric recluse, dressing in rags and living outside Leadville, Colorado, in a shack on the site of the stubbornly unproductive Matchless Mine, which she continued to work until her much-sensationalized death. Describing Baby Doe’s material faith and penitential practices and revisiting genres of the American western mythos, this talk considers artifacts and images collected from her shack after her gruesomely reported death, as well as an array of scraps, prayers, tea and palm readings, letters, and horoscopes, which Baby Doe collectively referred to as her “Dreams and Visions.” While many studies of frontier religion in the U.S. have tended to focus on the missionary efforts of Protestants intent to evangelize the world, this talk orients on the material and metaphysical prospecting of this provocative Irish Catholic miner and her material excess in order to reflect upon the dynamics of an imperial nation in the context of volatile capital enterprises and to reconsider the narrative spillage and grubstaking history of the ‘scandalous’ and the ‘operatic’ as genres of American religion.
Professor Bran Potter - “Songs of the Natural World”
The natural world has inspired a wonderful body of songs through the ages and sings magnificently on its own. The talk, interspersed with song, is an autobiographical walk through a life of singing around family campfires, in church settings, on field trips with students, and in a variety of concerts.
Professor Dan Backlund - “Beyond the Water’s Edge”
Humans have always been attracted by the ocean, and around 5000 BCE, began diving into the sea to gather food. As shipping for commerce evolved, so did the need for salvage, rescue, and recovery divers. Initially, that role was filled by adventurous individuals, but after 9/11, the specially trained public safety diver (PSD) became a recognized and critical job in the modern world. We’ll explore what is involved in becoming a PSD and what they do for the community.
Sewanee Seminar Faculty
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Alessia Martini joined Sewanee in 2019. Since then, she has led the Italian program and taught Italian language and culture at every level. Her teaching at Sewanee also includes courses in modern and contemporary Italian literature, Italian and Italian American cinema, Futurism, the Mafia, fascism, and migration. Her research in transnational Italian studies mainly focuses on spatial issues, especially the spatial representations of modernity in Italian literature and visual arts, along with space, identity, and memorialization within Italian migrant communities. Her current project seeks to reveal the impact of Italian craft and materials in shaping public memory spaces throughout the United States.
Andrew Maginn is an Atlantic World historian who specializes in the legacies of Slavery and Emancipation. His research interests include the history of Haitian trade, migration, and diplomacy during the nineteenth century. Dr. Maginn offers courses in African American History that focus on the African Diaspora and the Atlantic World. Dr. Maginn has several forthcoming publications including: a monograph exploring the experiences of three Haitian families (Louverture, Christophe, and Toussaint) in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy called Haitians Abroad: Transnational Networks, 1791-1880 (2026) with The University of North Carolina Press and a chapter entitled “First Generational Black Internationalism: Female Haitian Kinship Networks in the United States” in the forthcoming six-part series Cambridge History of Black Women in the United States (2026) from Cambridge University Press.
Kati Curts is Associate Professor of Religious Studies. She is a historian of American religion, specializing in the history and culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. She teaches courses and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture. Dr. Curts earned a M.A. in Religious Studies at New York University and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in American Religious History at Yale in 2016. Her first book, Assembling Religion: Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America (NYU Press) was published this May, and will be the subject of one of her talks this summer. She is currently working on a new project, a spiritual biography of a provocative silver miner named Baby Doe Tabor, which she will introduce in her second talk.
Bran Potter is Emeritus Professor of Geology. He arrived at Sewanee in the winter of 1980. During his forty years on the faculty he taught Physical Geology and Geology of the Western United States as well as field studies with students on the Cumberland Plateau, St. Catherine's Island in Georgia, and the Colorado Plateau. In the early 2000’s, Dr. Potter started a course called Walking the Land, which has a focus on nature writing and Sewanee’s natural history, and he was also integral to the development of the first-year program. He connected with students outside the classroom in programs at All Saints’ such as Catechumenate. Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing him play guitar knows he has a knack for music, but he humbly acknowledges that it has been his pleasure to play music and act in musicals with students he believes are more talented than himself. Folk and traditional music are a continuing pleasure, and he is now section-hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Dan Backlund is Emeritus Professor of Theatre. Beginning in 1989, Dan served in the Department of Theatre at Sewanee where he taught Scenic Design, Lighting Design, Scene Painting, Elements of Design, CAD, Model Making, Perspective and Rendering, Drawing, as well as a Flight Instructor and Scuba Instructor in the Physical Education Department, and after thirty-five years, retired this past summer. Upon retirement, he is proud to have received the Distinguished Faculty Award for his career from the Associated Alumni. Since 1976, Dan has worked professionally as a designer, scenic artist, and on production staffs for more than 600 projects in nineteen states and two countries creating scenery, lighting, and environmental designs for theatre, dance, opera, television, special events, live concerts, public space murals, museum, libraries, restaurants, and designs for residential, commercial, and other public spaces. Dan has also served as Chair of the Theatre Department, Interim Dean of Students, Manager of the Sewanee-Franklin County Airport, Assistant Provost for Summer Programs, and Director of the Sewanee Summer Seminar for 16 years. Dan received his undergraduate training at Bradley University and received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts. Dan also serves on the Franklin County Rescue Squad, and as a State Instructor for Dive Rescue and Rural Search and Rescue classes. He also is a Flight and Instrument Instructor (Airplane), a Master Scuba Diving Instructor, a Public Safety Dive Instructor, is a certified Master Underwater Criminal Investigator, and has recently been certified as an offshore celestial navigator.
Registration
THE TALKS | THE FACULTY | REGISTRATION | LIFELONG LEARNING
Use the form below to secure your spot in the Summer Seminar.
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