Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Fall/Winter 2017-18 | Page 16

Dr. Ilya Kutik (Northwestern)
Dr. Robert Rix (Copenhagen) and Colin Amato (GTU, Berkeley)
SWEDENBORG
AND THE ARTS
By Devin Zuber, Ph.D. (BA '00)
Associate Professor for American Studies, Religion, & Literature
Graduate Theological Union (GTU) at Berkeley
Conference Co-organizer
including Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the
T
he international conference “Swedenborg and
the Arts” took place over four days at Bryn
Athyn College, beginning with a reception at
Cairnwood and concluding with a panel on contem-
porary art that included a poetry reading by the re-
nowned Mexican author Homero Aridjis. The event
featured 38 scholars and specialists from various
fields—ranging from art history and literary criticism,
to philosophy, religious studies and the history of ar-
chitecture—who hailed from ten different countries,
16 | F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 - 1 8
United Kingdom. It was a first-time collaboration be-
tween the major educational institutions affiliated
with Swedenborgianism, including Bryn Athyn Col-
lege and the Center for Swedenborgian Studies at the
Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California,
as well as the Swedenborg Foundation and the Swe-
denborg Society in London (the world’s major pub-
lishers of work by and about Swedenborg). Another
key partner for the conference was the Center for
the Study of New Religious Movements (CESNUR),
in Turin, Italy, which has been a vital conduit for es-
tablishing some of the academic discourses impor-
tant for discussions of Emanuel Swedenborg (such