SVS Faculty in the Arts
Among our faculty the following are offering courses directly related to the sacred arts.
Peter Bouteneff - music and theology
Peter Bouteneff is director of the Institute of Sacred arts, and Professor of Systematic Theology. He took his first degree in music at New England Conservatory, in ethnomusicology and jazz bass performance, and later earned several degrees in theology culminating in a D.Phil. at Oxford. Over the last decade he has brought these interests and skills together, most prominently in the study of the music of Arvo Pärt. A founding director of the seminary’s Arvo Pärt Project, he authored the groundbreaking book Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence as well as numerous shorter essays. He is also co-editor of Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred, which was generated by an international conference on Pärt led by the Institute of Sacred Arts and which explores Pärt through the emerging field of sound studies. Dr. Bouteneff was for seven years choir director at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Yonkers, NY.
Rev. Dr. Sergius Halvorsen - homiletics & Rhetoric
Fr. Sergius Halvorsen is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Rhetoric. His grounding in the arts began with instrumental music, playing bassoon through college, then shifting focus to vocal music when he entered the Orthodox Church. His vocal training began with work in musical theater, and continued through his studies at St. Vladimir's Seminary where he earned his MDiv in 1996. He was the director of the 1995 St. Vladimir's Seminary Octet which recorded the CD "O Champion Leader," and has been a regular contributor to the Archangel Voices recordings. He has taught preaching since 2002 when he received his PhD in liturgical studies and homiletics from Drew University. His musical background strongly informs his approach to homiletics, understanding preaching as a sacred art in which the preacher both composes and performs an artistic component of the Liturgy.
Dn Vitaly Permiakov - Liturgical Theology
Born to a Russian family in Riga, Latvia, the Rev. Dn Dr Vitaly Permiakov relocated to the United States in 1999 after completing his undergraduate studies. After completing his M.Div. degree at St Vladimir’s Seminary, Dn Vitaly enrolled in a doctoral program in Liturgical Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where in 2012 he defended his dissertation on the history and origins of the Byzantine rite for the consecration of churches. Dn Vitaly taught at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary (Jordanville, NY) from 2011 to 2020, and joined the full-time faculty at St Vladimir's in August 2020.
Dn Harrison Basil Russin - musicology & composition
The Rev. Dn Dr Harrison Russin defended his Ph.D. in musicology at Duke University in 2021, having written a dissertation on musical settings of the Creed in late-medieval Italy and France. He graduated with his M.Div. from St Vladimir’s Seminary in 2013, and has been teaching and working there in many capacities since 2016.
Rossitza Schroeder - Art History
Rossitza Schroeder is Associate Professor of Art History at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and Assistant Director of the Institute of Sacred Arts. She is a medieval art historian with degrees from the University of Sofia in Bulgaria, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and the University of Maryland. She has held fellowships at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Dumbarton Oaks and the Stanley Seeger Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University. For ten years she taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and worked closely with its affiliate the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute. Her primary interest is late Byzantine art and architecture, and more specifically the relationship between monastic practice and the visual arts. She has published extensively on monastic meditation, prayer and penance in Palaeologan churches in Constantinople, Mount Athos, Thessaloniki and Ohrid, and has also tackled issues in italo-byzantine-ottoman connections as manifested in Gentile Bellini’s portrait of sultan Mehmed II. Most recently she co-edited a volume in honor of her doctoral advisor Henry Maguire which was published by Routledge. Currently she is exploring the ways in which Byzantium and her heritage impacted the visual culture of the young Bulgarian state in the late nineteenth early twentieth century.
Alexander Lingas - Music, Liturgy, chant
Alexander Lingas is Professor of Music and Associate Director of the Institute of Sacred Arts. He is founder and Artistic Director of the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and a Fellow of the University of Oxford's European Humanities Research Centre. His present work embraces historical study, ethnography, and performance. His publications include articles for The Oxford Companion to Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. He is currently working on a study of Sunday Matins in the Rite of Hagia Sophia for Ashgate and a historical introduction to Byzantine Chant for Yale University Press.
Affiliated Scholars and Artists
We are pleased to be able to draw on a number of extraordinary scholars and artists for the diverse creative and academic interests of our student body.
George Kordis - Iconography & Iconology
George Kordis is a world-renowned artist and scholar whose iconography adorns churches around the world, and who has held numerous visiting professorships at such institutions as Yale University, University of South Carolina, the Patriarchal School of Theology in Bucharest, and Ukraine Pedagogical University. His has published books and articles on a wide range of topics including the theory and practice of Orthodox iconography, Fayum mummy portraits, Theophan the Cretan, Andrei Rublev, Fotis Kontoglou, and Greek folk art, recently publishing Icon as Communion: The Ideals and Compositional Principles of Icon Painting with Holy Cross Orthodox Press in 2011. His art and iconography have been exhibited in both group and solo shows around the world, including at Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music in 2014.
Vasileios Marinis - Architecture
Vasileios Marinis, Associate Professor of Christian Art and Architecture at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, is a specialist in Byzantine architecture, material culture, and liturgy. He holds advanced degrees in both architectural history and liturgical theology, and has published the groundbreaking monograph Architecture and Ritual in the Churches of Constantinople (Ninth to Fifteenth Centuries), as well as essays including “Wearing the Bible: An Early Christian Tunic with New Testament Scenes,” “Tombs and Burials in the Monastery tou Libos in Constantinople,” and “Defining Liturgical Space in Byzantium.”
Fr. Ivan Moody (1964-2024) - Music, composition
Fr. Ivan Moody was a world-renowned composer and conductor who studied music and theology at the Universities of London, Joensuu and York (where he took his Ph.D). A disciple of John Tavener, his music has been performed and broadcast all over the world, and recorded on labels such as Hyperion, ECM, Telarc, Warner Classics, Sony, Linn, Orange Mountain and Challenge. His largest works to date are Passion and Resurrection (1992), the Akathistos Hymn (1998) and Qohelet (2013). Other significant works include The Dormition of the Virgin (2003), the double-bass concerto The Morning Star (2003), the piano concerto Linnunlaulu (2003), Passione Popolare (2005), Simeron (2013) for vocal trio and string trio, and the Dante Trilogy (2014) for choir and ensemble. A researcher the CESEM research unit at the Universidade Nova in Lisbon, Fr. Ivan was a prolific author of essays and books, including Modernism And Orthodox Spirituality In Contemporary Music. He was the Founding Chairman of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music. Read his In Memoriam.
AnneMarie Weyl Carr - Art History
Annemarie Weyl Carr, University Distinguished Professor Emerita of Art History at Southern Methodist University, has devoted her career to the history of the icon, questions of cultural interchange in the eastern Mediterranean Levant in the era of the Crusades, above all on the island of Cyprus, and on women artists in the Middle Ages. Her numerous publications include A Masterpiece of Byzantine Art Recovered: The Thirteenth-Century Murals of Lysi, Cyprus, Cyprus and the Devotional Arts of Byzantium in the Era of the Crusades, Asinou Across Time: Studies in the Archiecture and Murals of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus (ed. with Andreas Nicolaides).
Richard Schneider (1938-2022) - Former faculty in Iconology
Richard Schneider was one of the founders of the Institute of Sacred Arts. From 2000-2019, he served as Professor of Iconology and Hermeneutics at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where he led the program in Iconology, modern general hermeneutics, and modern church history. He was also Adjunct Professor and Co-coordinator of the School of Orthodox Theology of Trinity College (University of Toronto/ Toronto School of Theology). He was also Emeritus Professor of Church and Medieval History, York University (Toronto). Read his In Memoriam.