[Linganth] CaMP virtual reading group -- new time

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear CaMP Readers,

We will be chatting with Elayne Oliphant in two weeks about her book, The
Privilege of Being Banal.

She has asked us to read chapter 5, and the introduction if you would like
some more context.  Please read as much as you can, but do feel free to
join us even if you haven't managed to read everything.


PLEASE NOTE:  The reading group now meets from *12-1 pm*

on the last Friday of the month.



The readings can be found here:


Chapter 5:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bx3sk2o01tufjxd/Oliphant%2C%20Chapter%205.pdf?dl=0


Introduction:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/usnmz1g4s4nrypd/Oliphant%2C%20Introduction.pdf?dl=0

The meeting will be *12-1 pm*  EST on August 26th, and can be

reached by clicking on this Zoom link:

https://iu.zoom.us/j/949202698

Looking forward to seeing you all virtually,

Ilana


Press blurb: France, officially, is a secular nation. Yet Catholicism is
undeniably a monumental presence, defining the temporal and spatial rhythms
of Paris. At the same time, it often fades into the background as nothing
more than “heritage.” In a creative inversion, Elayne Oliphant asks in *The
Privilege of Being Banal *what, exactly, is hiding in plain sight? Could
the banality of Catholicism actually be a kind of hidden power?

Exploring the violent histories and alternate trajectories effaced through
this banal backgrounding of a crucial aspect of French history and culture,
this richly textured ethnography lays bare the profound nostalgia that
undergirds Catholicism’s circulation in nonreligious sites such as museums,
corporate spaces, and political debates. Oliphant’s aim is to unravel the
contradictions of religion and secularism and, in the process, show how
aesthetics and politics come together in contemporary France to foster the
kind of banality that Hannah Arendt warned against: the incapacity to take
on another person’s experience of the world. A creative meditation on the
power of the taken-for-granted, *The Privilege of Being Banal *is a
landmark study of religion, aesthetics, and public space.


*Fall Semester*

August 26th - Elayne Oliphant, The Privilege of Being Banal

September 30th- Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas, Genres of Listening

October 28th- Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, The Quantified Scholar

November 18th- Scott MacLochlainn, The Copy Generic



*Spring Semester*

January 27th - Nick Seaver, Computing Taste

February 24th- Marlene Schäfers, Voices that Matter

March 31st - Michele Friedner, Sensory Futures

April 28th - Dick Bauman, A Most Valuable Medium
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