The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research and Institutional Life for the Twenty-first Century contributes to an understanding of the importance and implications of a contemplative grounding for higher education. It is the fourth in a series entitled Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research and Application, which is intended to be an authoritative and comprehensive series in the field. This volume consists of chapters written by noted scholars from both Eastern and Western traditions that shed light on the following questions: What is an appropriate epistemological grounding for contemplative higher education? How dues the current dominant epistemology in higher education mitigate against contemplative teaching, learning, and research? What alternatives can be offered? How can a contemplative culture be nurtured in the classroom? What difference does that culture make in teaching and learning? What is the role of individual and institutional leadership in creating and sustaining this culture? What is contemplative research? How can the emerging field of contemplative studies fit into the twenty-first-century university? What can faculty and students learn from contemplative practices about how to find peace of mind in a world of higher education characterized by increasing complexity, financial pressures, and conflicts? What does a contemplative organizational structure look like in higher education? How can committees, faculty meetings, and administrative teams use contemplative practices to work more effectively together? How can contemplative decision-making processes be used in higher education? Given hierarchies, turf wars, and academics' propensity for using argument as a weapon, is it possible to introduce contemplative practices into decision-making situations in appropriate ways?

In this compelling study of two seventeenth-century female mystics, Bo Karen Lee examines the writings of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, who, despite different religious formations, came to similar conclusions about the experience of God in contemplative prayer. Van Schurman was born into a Dutch Calvinist family and become a superb scriptural commentator before undergoing a dramatic religious conversion and joining the Labadist community, a Pietistic movement. Guyon was a French layperson whose thought would be identified with Quietism--a spiritual path that was looked upon with suspicion both by the French Catholic Church and by Rome.
Lee analyzes and compares the themes of self-denial and self-annihilation in the writings of these two mystics. In van Schurman's case, the focus is on the distinction between scholastic knowledge of God and the "intima notitia Dei "accessible only by radical self-denial. In Guyon's case, it is on the union with God that is accessible only through a painful self-annihilation. For both authors, Lee demonstrates that the desire for enjoyment of God plays an important role as the engine of the soul's progress away from self-centeredness. The appendices offer facing Latin and English translations of two letters by van Schurman and a selection from her "Eukleria."
"This book is well written, well researched, and original. Bo Karen Lee's study represents the most sustained contemporary English-language investigation of van Schurman's work that I know of. Guyon has received more scholarly and popular attention, but few authors have taken her theology seriously in the way that this volume does." --Ronney Mourad, Albion College

The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research and Institutional Life for the Twenty-first Century contributes to an understanding of the importance and implications of a contemplative grounding for higher education. It is the fourth in a series entitled Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research and Application, which is intended to be an authoritative and comprehensive series in the field. This volume consists of chapters written by noted scholars from both Eastern and Western traditions that shed light on the following questions: What is an appropriate epistemological grounding for contemplative higher education? How dues the current dominant epistemology in higher education mitigate against contemplative teaching, learning, and research? What alternatives can be offered? How can a contemplative culture be nurtured in the classroom? What difference does that culture make in teaching and learning? What is the role of individual and institutional leadership in creating and sustaining this culture? What is contemplative research? How can the emerging field of contemplative studies fit into the twenty-first-century university? What can faculty and students learn from contemplative practices about how to find peace of mind in a world of higher education characterized by increasing complexity, financial pressures, and conflicts? What does a contemplative organizational structure look like in higher education? How can committees, faculty meetings, and administrative teams use contemplative practices to work more effectively together? How can contemplative decision-making processes be used in higher education? Given hierarchies, turf wars, and academics' propensity for using argument as a weapon, is it possible to introduce contemplative practices into decision-making situations in appropriate ways?