Smick, Rebekah

Rebekah Smick
College: Institute for Christian Studies
Degrees: PhD (Toronto)
Email: r.smick@utoronto.ca
Phone: 416-979-2331 ext 288
Teaching Category:
Affiliate Cross-Appointment
Appointment Status:
Basic Degree
GCTS Associate
Research Interests:
History / Historiography / Methodology
Liturgy / Ritual / Spirituality / Art
Practical Theology / Preaching / Religious Education

Bio

Associate Professor of Philosophy of the Arts and Culture 

BA (Brandeis University), MA (Columbia University), PhD (University of Toronto)

Rebekah Smick specializes in pre-Kantian and Kantian art theory and criticism, in particular the relation of early modern visual arts theory to poetics and rhetoric in the Western tradition. Her research and teaching investigate the aesthetic values of beauty, grace and decorum in the early modern period, the role and place of imagination in the Western art and aesthetics tradition, the aesthetic function of metaphor, and the place of compassion in Western art, aesthetics and literature. She is especially interested in the interrelation of aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology in Western art and aesthetics. She is author and editor of Antiquity and Its Interpreters (Cambridge UP, 2000) and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà as Image in the Theology and Aesthetics of Compassion.

  • Specializations

    • Philosophy of art (early modern and modern)
    • Theology of art
    • Rhetoric and Poetics
    • History of Art (Late Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque)

  • Publications

    • “Augustinian Decorum and the Navigation of License in Humanist Art Theory.” Source: Notes in the History of Art. University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2025.
    • Volume VB: Catholic Reformation. Early Modern Sources and Documents. In Sources and Documents in the History of Christian Art. Ed. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, forthcoming 2025.
    • “Rhetoric and Imagination” in Theological Prolegomena. Ed. Paul Allen. T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology. Eds. I. Torrance and P. Molnar, 2024.
    • “Kuyper’s Calvin: The Aesthetics of Disenchantment” In The Sound of Wings: Essays on Art, Truth and Society in Honour of Lambert P. Zuidervaart. Festschrift for Lambert Zuidervaart. Eds. Peter Enneson, Michael DeMoor and Matt Klassen. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020, 198-224.
    • “’The Second Book of God’: Protestant Mysticism.” In Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, van Gogh and more. Ed. Katharine Lochnan. Art Gallery of Ontario & Musée D’Orsay. DelMonico Books – Prestel, 2016, 69-79.
    • “Introduction.” Betty White: Exhibition Catalogue. Toronto: Theodora Art Gallery, 2015, 1-3.
    • Antiquity and Its Interpreters: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era. Co-edited with Alina Payne and Anne Kuttner. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Paperback Edition 2011.
    • “A Different Tenor: Songs of Love and Sorrow—Re-Engaging the Social Ethics of Music” with Lambert Zuidervaart. Toronto Journal of Theology, 27/1, 2011, 87–106.
    • "Grazia in The Lives of Giorgio Vasari: Rhetorical Flourish or the Power of God?" In Image Makers and Image Breakers. Ed. Jennifer A. Harris. Ottawa: Legas, 2003, 119-135.
    • "Touch in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Sensual Ethics of Architecture." In Early Modern Senses of Touch. Ed. Elizabeth D. Harvey. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, 205-223.
    • "Vivid Thinking: Word and Image in Descriptive Techniques of the Renaissance." In Antiquity and Its Interpreters: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era. Eds. Ann Kuttner, Alina Payne, Rebekah Smick. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 159-173.
    • "Introduction," (with Ann Kuttner and Alina Payne). In Antiquity and Its Interpreters: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era. Eds. Ann Kuttner, Alina Payne, Rebekah Smick. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 1-5.<
    • "Evoking the Vatican Pietà: Renaissance and Baroque Contributions to the Topos of Living Stone." In The Eye of the Poet: Studies in the Reciprocity of the Visual and Literary Arts. Ed. Amy Golahny. Lewiston: Bucknell University Press, 1995, 23-52.
    • "The Architecture of Eden Smith (1859-1949)." In Household of God: A Parish History of St. Thomas's  Church, Toronto. Ed. David Kent. Toronto. Toronto: St. Thomas's Press, 1993, 116-121.