The meaning of reading

There’s nothing like being transported to imaginative worlds by another person’s writing, but it’s harder and harder to read undistracted by digital pressures and lures. Join us and our guest, Ronan McDonald, professor of Irish Studies, as we explore whether reading in the old, immersive way still matters, and if so, why. With spoken word and live music brought together for one special evening, we’ll conjure the works of the glorious Irish modernists, Joyce, Yeats, Beckett and others, surrounding ourselves with language, metaphor and character. You just might find a philosophical justification for that delicious pleasure – tucking yourself away for a good few hours with a favourite book.

Ronan McDonald

Speaker

Ronan McDonald is a professor at the University of Melbourne, where he holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Irish Studies. He is president-elect of Melbourne’s Celtic Club, Australia’s oldest Irish organization. His research and writing explore Irish and modernist literature as well as broader questions about the history of criticism, cultural value, and the role of the humanities today. He has published widely in these areas and beyond both for academic publications and for national newspapers and magazines. His current research examines the history and philosophy of attention and distraction, drawing on literary, aesthetic, and neuroscientific approaches to explore how the arts and humanities cultivate forms of care and focus that resist the distracted tempo of digital life.

Artists

To be announced soon

Brigid Hains

Host

Brigid Hains is the editorial director of Aeon Media. An environmental historian by training, she is driven by a deep curiosity about the natural and human worlds. The Sophia Club is a chance for Brigid to express her love of beauty and the arts, and to share the heartfelt dimensions of her intellectual life.