Tuesday, January 26, 2010 – 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

St Jude/Claretian Building

205 West Monroe

Chicago, IL 60606

Our January seminar will focus on Tracy Fessenden’s new book: Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton University Press, 2007). Fessenden argues that Protestantism gave birth to and remains bound up with the form of secularism most prevalent in contemporary American culture; beginning with the Puritans, she reconsiders both American religious history and American literary history even as she seeks to demonstrate how “a particular strain of post-Protestant secularism, often blind to its own exclusions, became normative for understanding” each. Farrell O’Gorman of DePaul University will lead the discussion. We encourage participants to suggest books or a series of articles of interest.

If you plan to attend and have not informed us, please respond to Malachy McCarthy mccarthym@claretians.org by January 22, 2010.