Stephen Garrett
Senior Fellow, Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts
Research Interests: Theological/Philosophical Aesthetics; Dialogical Personalism; Early Twentieth-century Avant Garde Art; (Russian) Dada; Hans Urs von Balthasar; Marcel Duchamp; Alain LeRoy Locke
Dr. Garrett joined the Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts as a Senior Fellow in 2024. He was formerly an associate professor of Philosophy and Religion at the Vilnius Academy of Arts where his teaching and research with Lithuanian and East European artists opened him to their historic suffering and current struggle to live between the social realism of the past and the late modern, democratic capitalism of the present. At the heart of these transitions are questions concerning God’s identity, human dignity, creativity, and freedom, all of which animate his research trajectory at the nexus of art and the political.
Some of Dr. Garrett’s publications include God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory (2013), “The Difference of Indifference: Marcel Duchamp and the Possibilities of Dialogical Personalism”(2024), and two forthcoming volumes, T&T Clark Handbook to Theology and the Arts (2025) co-edited with Imogen Adkins and Hans Urs von Balthasar: Introduction and Sourcebook (2027). He also serves as a Research Scholar with the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought.
