Within a Sky Full of Earth

The Departement of English of the University of Macau presents:
Steven Schroeder • Shenzhen University

That Reminds me of a Story:
Making Ourselves at Home in the Practice of Ethics

When Aristotle wrote that we go to the city to live but stay to live the good life, he had a village in mind. Philosophers have struggled since before Aristotle to imagine the good in the real form of a city where people could live it. But cities of ten thousand villages, like the ones we inhabit now, pose problems Aristotle could not have dreamed. But we have to. And dreaming cities of ten thousand villages takes place at an intersection where philosophy and creative writing meet. It is an act of imagination, of making ourselves at home in the world the way we make ourselves at home as readers and writers in stories and poems.
In this talk, Steven Schroeder will draw on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Dolores Hayden, Martin Heidegger, Yi Fu Tuan, and Slavoj Zizek - but also particularly on his experience in Shenzhen and Chicago. Poetry and philosophy come to mind through our feet as well as through our ears and eyes. So his work draws on walking the city, from the Texas Panhandle to the Pearl River Delta, as well as reading it philosophically. Steven invites you to explore intersections where we dream cities and invite you to think with him about the philosophical and creative skills we must cultivate to make ourselves at home in a place like the one we've been making here on the Pearl River Delta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Schroeder's most recent book is The Imperfection of the Eye, a collection of poems published by Virtual Artists Collective in 2007. A collection of Chicago poems, Six Stops South, is forthcoming from Cherry Grove Collections. He is the author of ten books of poetry, philosophy, and religious studies--including Touching Philosophy, Sounding Religion, Placing Education; Between Freedom and Necessity; and The Metaphysics of Cooperation--from Editions Rodopi in the Netherlands. He has lectured in Finland, Lithuania, Russia, the UK, the United States, and China, and currently teaches at Shenzhen University and the University of Chicago.

This session will follow with "9 Poets", a Poetry Reading, that will have the presence of the following poets: Steven Schroeder, James Stuart, Jane Gibian, Yao Feng, Amy Wong, Hilda Tam, Elisa Lai, Iris Fan and Christopher Kelen.

The venue will be at Room L105 • University of Macau, tomorrow, Friday 17th, 17h30 and 18h30.
For enquiries contact: mychiu@umac.mo