Apply for Faculty and Staff Winter Seminar Retreat

Full-time faculty and exempt staff are invited to apply for Pepperdine's Center for Faith and Learning Winter Seminar Retreat for a discussion of R.F. Kuang's Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. The retreat will be held from January 9 to 10, 2025, at the Mary and Joseph Retreat Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Participants have the option of arriving early and staying an additional night on January 8 for a personal retreat. The seminar will discuss the relationship between revolution and educations of institution by way of fantasy literature. Participants will discuss why education so often leads to rebellion or violence by asking questions like: What does it mean to be inheritors of imperfect institutions? What responsibility do we have to the past or the future? How do we strike the balance between our own agency and the recognition of our own contingent knowledge?

Apply by November 15, 2024, at 5 PM. There is space for 12 faculty and exempt staff. Attendees will be chosen to represent a diverse range of participants from all areas of the University. The seminar will be led by J.A.T. Smith, associate director for the Center for Faith and Learning. Participants will recieve a $250 stipend, a copy of the book to read in advance, and room and board at the retreat center, including lunch and dinner on Thursday and breakfast and lunch on Friday. Participants who choose to stay an extra day prior to the event will also have the option of breakfast on January 9 at the retreat center. Contact Stephanie Cupp with questions.

The book begins in 1828, and centers on Robin Swift, who is orphaned by cholera in Canton and brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide… Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?