Staff profile

staff list  BackDr Ivan Khovacs

  • Job title: Senior Lecturer
  • Dept: Theology and Religious Studies
  • Tel: 01227 782894
  • Campus: Canterbury
Khovac

Senior Lecturer in Theology

Personal

PhD  (St Andrews), MA (Vancouver), BA (Santa Barbara)

I'm from Santa Barbara, California, spent eight years in Scotland, and came to Canterbury in 2008 to direct theological education for licensed lay and ordained ministry, develop academic curricula, as well as teach in the BA (Hons.) Theology degree. I have lectured widely in Christian doctrine, faith in the contemporary world, Christian ethics, Anglican theology, as well as theology and the arts (literature, drama and theatre). I especially enjoy helping students make constructive connections between the ideas emerging from and underpinning relgious understanding and their academic goals; I spend much of time in personal tutorials with students, directing dissertations and theses, and guiding students towards post-graduate education.

Principal teaching 

  • Religion & Literature (Theological engagement with literature and literary theory)
  • Christian Belief and Practice (Christian beliefs, their underpinning & implications)
  • Practical Theology (Understanding and theological reflection on pastoral praxis)
  • Anglican Theology (Anglican theology through events, ideas and key figures)
  • Systematic Theology (God and creation, Christ and Incarnation, the Church)
  • Christian Ethics (Theological notions of character identity and discipleship)

Publications  

  • Ivan Khovacs (under review), book review, Past watchful dragons: fantasy and faith in the world of C.S. Lewis,edited by Amy H. Sturgis. Altadena, Calif.: Mythopoeic Press, 2007. Book review for C.S. Lewis Chronicle (Oxford Journals).
  • Ivan Khovacs, co-edited with T. Hart, Tree of Tales: Tolkien, Literature and Theology; Baylor University Press, 2007.
  • Ivan P Khovacs, 'A Cautionary Note on the Use of Theatre for Theology' in Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition, eds. S. Guthrie and T. Hart, Ashgate, 2007.
  • Ivan Khovacs, "The Cloud of Witnesses': A Film Montage of Hebrews 11:29-12:7, 11-13". Lectionary Homiletics Journal XXII, 3 (August 2007)
  • Ivan Khovacs, Theological drama and Christian faith'. Lectionary Homiletics XXI, 2 (July. 2006).

Theodrama contributions     

  • 'Theodrama: Portrait of an Analogy in Search of a Praxis, an Actor in Search of a Stage', Public Lecture Series, Regent College, Vancovuer (UBC 2010)
  • 'Theology, Aesthetics and Culture: Conversations with the Work of David Brown', Short Academic Papers Chair, University of St Andrews (August 2010)
  • 'Through glass darkly: seeing film in theological perspective', ITIA Research Seminar, University of St Andrews (May 2010)
  • 'Trinitarian Aesthetic and the Theatre', Theology Research Seminar, Theology & Religious Studies, Liverpool Hope University (2009)
  • 'Taste and see: 'props' and dramatic presence in the Eucharist, ITIA Research Colloquium, University of St Andrews (May 2005)
  • 'Audience participation in Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological drama', Theology Seminar, University of Aberdeen (June 2004).
  • 'De spectaculis: A theological response to Tertullian's invective against the theatre', Theology Seminar, University of Edinburgh (May 2003).
  • 'What is Theo-Drama? A constructive critique of Von Balthasar's theological dramatic theory', Theology Seminar, University of St Andrews (2002).
  • 'The Theatre of the World: Von Balthasar's use of the dramatic metaphor', Theology Seminar, University of St Andrews (June 2001).

Research interests

  •  Inter-disciplinary approaches to Christian theology, Christian ethics as well as theology's application in ministry.
  • Theological appropriation of dramatic metaphors and their bearing on classical doctrines of creation and providence, revelation and incarnation, pneumatology and eschatology.
  • Theological aesthetics evincing God's authorial imaging in the faith of the believer (imago Dei), as well as transformation and the 'theodramatic' shape of salvation; the redemption of human identity 'in Christ' and the Church's participation in God's missio in the world.
  • The 'theo-logical' character of Christian action and ethical reflection, discipleship as 'putting on' Christ (hence, to taking on his character without loss of particularity), theodramatic models of 'person'—prosopon understood in theatre as the embodiment of character—and their rendering of an ethics at once faithful to Christian tradition and capable of an inspired interpretation of the contemporary 'scene'.
  • Film as analogue to Scripture's narrative principle that believing is seeing things in a divine light (for in the cinema, seeing is belief guided by the directorial eye); so, image narrative that captures and transforms the imagination, the cinematic lens and its rendering of the world as a revealed world, though 'through a glass darkly', for the renewal of human seeing.