Evening at Egan: “Trickster Reads Scripture: Story and Truth in a Postsecular Age”

The Evening at Egan Fall 2011 Series at the University of Alaska Southeast reaches the half way point with a multi-genre, multimedia presentation by UAS faculty member Sol Neely.

Juneau, Alaska

Sol Neely, Assistant Professor English, University of Alaska Southeast
 Friday, October 21, 2011. 7p.m. Egan Lecture Hall.

The Evening at Egan Fall 2011 Series at the University of Alaska Southeast reaches the half way point with a multi-genre, multimedia presentation by UAS faculty member Sol Neely.

Combining lecture, film, and poetry, "Trickster Reads Scripture: Story and Truth in a Postsecular Age" is a  brief history of the way we’ve been taught to read literature and culture. "Since Plato and Aristotle," said Neely, "we have been taught to read as philosophers rather than poets, which is to say that we’ve been taught to sacralize a particular kind of objective, essential 'truth' over the lived, dramatic, ethical insights of “story."

Neely contends that the consequences of this philosophical conditioning may lead to violence, war, and sacrificial economies of indifference and irredeemable poverty. In contrast to such a philosophical-sacrificial heritage of reading—which dominates our academic, religious, and political institutions—this presentation will explore two traditions of “reading” that have escaped such early philosophical conditioning of European intellectual history: Native American cultures of story and Rabbinic modes of Biblical reading.

For complete information on the UAS Evening at Egan series including live streaming and simulcast, please see the website at: http://www.uas.alaska.edu/eganlecture