Reading, Spirituality & Cultural Politics
For the average North American, reading means having the luxury of time to tune out the rest of the world and curl up with a good book. But is reading purely a selfish act of escape? Does it really isolate us? Have we taken for granted this idle past time and forgotten the power it holds?
“For many of us, reading is blasé, taken for granted and even easily dismissed. Or, if it’s not dismissed, it’s minimized by being personalized. We tend to think of the personal and private benefits of reading and, in so doing, we forget the wide-ranging social and political effects it has,” argues Daniel Coleman, PhD, who is currently serving as Campion College’s Father Peter Nash, SJ, Chair in Religion.
On Thursday, March 13, 2008, Coleman will present the 29th Nash Memorial Lecture entitled Reading, Spirituality and Cultural Politics, at 7:30 pm in the Riffel Auditorium at Campion College, University of Regina. His talk will explore the spiritual dimensions of the paradox of reading, an act which isolates the reader at the same time that it creates a connection with the outside world.
“Reading is not solely an exercise to feed one’s inner life. Rather, eating the book—not just nibbling at it, or having a little taste here and there, but eating it wholesale—produces a changed person, an empowered person, a different kind of person, and changed people means social and political change, too, not just personal change,” says Coleman.
An alumnus of Campion College, Coleman teaches and carries out research in Canadian Literature, the literary and cultural production of categories of privilege such as whiteness, masculinity, and Britishness, and the literatures of immigration and diaspora. He has published White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (U Toronto Press, 2006), The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia (Goose Lane Editions, 2003), and has co-edited seven scholarly volumes on various issues including early Canadian culture, Caribbean Canadian writing, masculinities, postcoloniality, and race. One of Coleman’s current scholarly projects is a book manuscript entitled In Bed with the Word: Reading, Spirituality, and Cultural Politics.
There is no admission charge for the lecture. Parking is available in authorized 'M' areas of lot 3.