Courses

Canopy Forum works with leading scholars to produce free, open-access, mini-courses on pressing topics. Previous courses have included James W. McCarty on Restorative Justice, Yolanda van der Vyver on Monumental Meanings, and Mona Siddiqui on Martyrs, Minorities, Faith, and Fidelity. You can access these resources and more below.

Image of Bove Island in the Tagish Lake, Yukon Territory by Richard Martin (CC BY 2.0 DEED)

February 2024 —  A transformative course on restorative justice, a healing force and a mechanism for accountability. In this series of lectures, James W. McCarty delves into restorative justice as a dynamic global social movement seeking to transform harm.

Robert E. Lee Monument. Photo taken by Joseph. Flickr. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

October 2022 — Monuments are powerful symbols of collective identity. The medium, location, and content of such monuments reflect and communicate the values of the communities that erect them. Monuments often memorialize the events, traumas, achievements, and people who helped define particular moments and period in a community’s history. But communities – and the power dynamics that define them – change. In this mini-course, Dr. Yolanda van der Vyver explores the removal of contentious monuments from public spaces in the United States and South Africa.

January – February 2022 — Loyalty is at the center of human life – and often death. It defines families and friendships, philosophies and faiths. It also creates enemies, divides nations, and inspires people to kill and die for their country or creed. The nature and force of our loyalties to different people, ideas, and things shapes virtually every aspect of our lives. In this course, Professor Mona Siddiqui explores the polyvalent meanings of ‘loyalty’ in Christian and Islamic thought.