Hello! You’ve reached the site of Dr. Sean Hannan, Associate Professor in the Humanities at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I’m the author of On Time, Change, History, & Conversion, part of Bloomsbury’s Reading Augustine series. Feel free to click on this link to the Bloomsbury site & order a copy! If you like the topic of temporality, please also consider purchasing a copy of this volume I co-edited: Augustine & Time.
Most recently, I’ve co-written Mysticism & Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism, which is forthcoming from Routledge in their Contemporary Theological Explorations of Mysticism series. My co-author is Dr. W. Ezekiel Goggin. The book deals with medieval contemplatives like Angela of Foligno, Meister Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, & Nicholas of Cusa, as well as with modern philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Marx, & Bataille. You can check our work out by clicking on this link.
Here at MacEwan, I get the chance to teach a broad selection of History courses, ranging from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and up to the early modern period. At the same time, I lead a number of sections in our interdisciplinary Humanities stream, which aims to bring the best of the liberal arts tradition to Western Canada. Through more intimate class sizes and close-reading techniques, our goal is to introduce students to some of the most influential works in intellectual, religious, and literary history.
In addition to my traditional teaching duties, I also have something of a Digital Humanities mandate here at MacEwan. For the most part, this takes the shape of pursuing digital resources that can help students engage more fruitfully with History in particular and the Humanities more generally. To that end, I’ve tried to contribute some of my own data to ongoing research in the field of digital pedagogies. This site should function as a storehouse for that kind of DH data and my (hopefully useful!) interpretation of that data.
My own research focuses on the life and writings of Augustine of Hippo, a Christian bishop who was active in North Africa during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. While I retain an interest in early Christianity as a whole, my specific interest lies in Augustine’s philosophy of time, which stands out as unique when compared to both its ancient forerunners and medieval successors. Since the nature of temporality is a topic that continues to vex the twenty-first-century mind, my long-term goal is to bring Augustine back into conversation with contemporary debates about what we’re really talking about when we talk about “time.”
Here’s a recent copy of my CV: Hannan – 2022 CV – Jan. 28
Feel free to contact me about my teaching or research at:
hannans@macewan.ca
For further information on my role in the Humanities at MacEwan University, see my official profile here.
