About
Sean Hannan (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2016) is an Associate Professor in the Humanities at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His research focuses on the intellectual history of Christianity, with emphases on late antiquity, North Africa, and the philosophy of time. While his doctoral project dealt with temporality in the works of Augustine of Hippo, his current research broadens out to incorporate alternative accounts of time drawn from antiquity and the Middle Ages. At MacEwan, he has a mandate to make use of methods from the digital humanities when teaching courses on ancient, medieval, and early modern history. Education
Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 2016)
M.A. (University of Chicago, 2008)
B.A., Hons. (University of Alberta, 2007) Publications
Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism. Co-authored with W. Ezekiel Goggin. London: Routledge, 2022.
Reading Augustine: on Time, Change, History, and Conversion. Part of the
Reading Augustine Series, edited by Miles Hollingworth.
London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
Augustine and Time. Edited by John Doody, Kim Paffenroth, and Sean Hannan. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, Under Contract.
“Optatus of Milevis and the Improvisation of Universalism.”
Proceedings of the Lived Ancient Religion in North Africa Conference (Madrid, Feb. 19-21, 2020). In Preparation.
“Individuating Time: the Indivisible Moment in Augustine and Ancient Atomism.”
The Unique, the Singular, and the Individual: the Debate about the Non-Comparable. Eds. Ingolf U. Dalferth and Trevor W. Kimball. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, Forthcoming.
“The Alienated Interiority of
Cogitatio.”
Re-Thinking Augustine on Interiority. Eds. Matthew W. Knotts, Anthony Dupont, & Gerald Boersma. Forthcoming.
“The Camp of God: Reimagining
Peregrinatio as Migrancy in Augustine’s
City of God 1.”
Political Theology (2021). Accepted for Publication.
“The Enforcement of Violence and the Force of Love in Augustine: Epistle 93 and its Aftermath.”
Studia Patristica XCIX (2021). In Press.
“Nineveh Overturned: Augustine and Chrysostom on the Threat of Jonah.”
Journal of Early Christian Studies 28, no. 1 (2020), 61-87.
“Knife-Edge & Saddleback: Augustine & William James on the Psychology of the Specious Present.”
Consensus 40, no. 2 (2019), 5.1-12.
“Augustine’s Time of Death in
City of God 13.”
Augustinian Studies 50, no. 1 (2019), 43-63.
“Demonic Historiography & the Historical Sublime in Augustine’s
City of God.”
Studia Patristica XCVIII, vol. 24 (Autumn 2017), 553-560.
“To See Coming: Augustine and Heidegger on the Arising and Passing Away of Things.”
Medieval Mystical Theology: the Journal of the Eckhart Society 21, no. 1 (2012), 75-91.
Projects
Augustine & the Theology of Migration: a book-length project expanding on ideas surfaced in my recent article for
Political Theology:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1462317X.2020.1840036
Mysticism & Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism: a book on the reception of medieval mystical thought in nineteenth-century German-language philosophy, co-authored with W. Ezekiel Goggin. Currently under contract with Routledge.
Mystical Theology & Platonism in the Time of Cusanus: a co-edited volume drawing on the expertise of members of the American Cusanus Society, a scholarly association of which I am now serving as interim Secretary.
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
* denotes “postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis.”
“‘They’re Killing It Right Now: On the Weirdness of Catholic Twitter,” Invited Lecture, St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, September 2020.
“Through a Clock Darkly: the Time of the Eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei,” Biennial Conference of the American Cusanus Society, Gettysburg, PA, September 2020.*
“Practicing Augustinisme Politique: the Afterlife of Augustine’s Anti-Donatist Realpolitik,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 2020.*
“Plotinus and Augustine on Timaeus 37D and the Temporality of Eudaemonia,” The Reception of Plato in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, University of Athens, Greece, June 2020.*
“The Relationship Between Du Bois’ Classicism and His Marxism,” W.E.B. Du Bois and the Ancient Mediterranean, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, May 2020.*
“The Eye Seeing Itself According to Nicholas of Cusa and Meister Eckhart,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2020.* Memberships
North American Patristics Society
American Academy of Religion
American Cusanus Society
