HG Wells and the Apocalypse

The Christian Literary Imagination Series

Continuing from the previous academic year, over the course of the 2021-22 academic year the Future of the Humanities Project is sponsoring a series of webinars on the Christian literary imagination in collaboration with Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. The ‘Christian Literary Imagination Series’ will explore the role and function of the arts and humanities in the development of the individual and society.

The hour-long virtual events will be followed by a Q & As chaired by Professor Michael Scott. These events are free and hosted on Zoom by Georgetown University.

 

In this talk, Charles Tung will discuss recent visions of the university and the future of knowledge transmission in contemporary apocalyptic and ethnofuturist fictions. By looking back to previous fantasies of historical progress and evolutionary global interconnection such as H.G. Wells’ “world brain” and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “noosphere,” Tung will explore the unforeseen harmful half-lives of modernity’s hopes and the history supporting those hopes, as well as the challenges of viral culture to the humanist mission of universities.

Charles Tung is a professor and chair of the English Department at Seattle University. His doctoral work focused on early twentieth-century British and American literature and time philosophy. He also has research interests in race and atavism, models of history and identity in cultural and ethnic studies, and time-travel narratives. Most recently, he published Modernism and Time Machines (2020) with Edinburgh University Press.

 

Upcoming events:

9^th December
Julia Lamm – Julian of Norwich

 

Hilary Term

18^th January
Barbara Mujica – Teresa d’ Avila

1^st February
Mark Bosco – Graham Greene

15^th February
Hester Jones – TBC

1^st March
Mike Collins – Two Welsh Poets: R S Thomas and John Ormond

15^th March
Bridget Keegan – Jane Barker + Elizabeth Inchbald: Overt and Covert Catholicism

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk