Dr. Carlos Colorado

Title: Professor; JMP Chair
Phone: 204-786-9171
Office: 3C02A
Email: c.colorado@uwinnipeg.ca

Degrees:

Ph.D. – McMaster University (2009)

M.A. – Simon Fraser University (2004)

B.A. – Simon Fraser University (2001)

Biography:

Dr. Carlos D. Colorado earned his Ph.D. in 2009 from McMaster University, Department of Religious Studies, with expertise in the areas of Religion and Politics and Western Religious Thought. His research and teaching attend critically to the place of religion in western modernity, focusing especially on the ways in which religion shapes social, political and ethical life in contemporary secular cultures.

His current research focuses on secularism, colonialism, race and the politics of identity. He is an expert on the work of the Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor and is currently finalizing a book manuscript entitled “Recovering Transcendence in a Secular Age: Charles Taylor’s Catholic Thought.” Dr. Colorado is also in the early stages of a multi-year project project entitled “Indigeneity, Race and Mestizo/Métis Identities in Comparative Perspectives.”

Colorado at lectern His feature-length documentary film, The Good Life: Decolonizing the Secular, explores the important role of Indigenous spirituality in Canadian public life and examines whether processes of reconciliation can be “secular” — an arrangement of power that often segregates spirituality and religion outside of public life. The film engages a number of relevant interrelated questions: What is Canadian secularism and how does it delimit the role of spirituality and ceremony in public life? Do traditional Indigenous philosophies of the “good life” — such as the Anishinaabe notion of “Mino-Bimaadiziwin” — allow for a secular/sacred division? Is the expectation of such a division of life yet another iteration of colonialist structures of power? And if this is so, does secularity first need to be decolonized to allow for real reconciliation?

Many of Dr. Colorado’s courses emphasize experiential learning. In summer 2013, Dr. Colorado organized and co-taught (along with Dr. Susan Fisher) the department’s inaugural Bordeaux Field Study Program, which provided UW students the opportunity to study religious & cultural phenomena in the focused social context of France. He has additionally taught and helped coordinate a number of public Institutes through CLASS and founded and chaired the Axworthy Distinguished Lecture Series from 2015-2018, hosting speakers including Angela Davis, Jane Goodall, Winona LaDuke, Vandana Shiva, Edward Snowden, and Cornel West. In recognition of his contribution as a public intellectual, Dr. Colorado was awarded the Marsha Hanen Award for Excellence in Creating Community Awareness.

Dr. Colorado serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada. He is also the Vice-President of the University of Winnipeg Faculty Association.

Teaching Areas:
Religion and Politics; Religion and Modernity; Secularism; Religion, Power and Coloniality.

Courses:

Exploring Religion: World Religions (REL-1002)
Religion and Culture: The Multifaith Society (REL-2405)
Issues in the Study of Secular Society (REL-2406)
Religious Quest in a Modern Age (REL-3/4512)

Publications:

Book cover With Jennifer Selby (eds.) ‘Open Secularism’ from the Margins, La « laïcité ouverte » vue des marges, Special Issue of Social Compass 67:1 (March 2020). Accessible at https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/scp/67/1

“Reconciliation and the Secular” Social Compass. 2020;67(1):72-85. Accessible at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0037768619894510

With Ray Silvius, Hani Al-Ubeady, Dylan Chyz-Lund and Emily Halldorson, “What Does It Take to House a Syrian Refugee? Supporting Refugee Housing and Resettlement Beyond the Syrian Refugee Crisis,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Jan. 27, 2017. Available here.

With Justin Klassen (eds.) Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age: Essays on Religion and Theology in the Work of Charles Taylor. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

Book cover “Transcendent Sources, Expressivism and the Dispossession of the Self,” in Aspiring to Fullness in A Secular Age. Carlos Colorado and Justin Klassen eds. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

“Canadian Ethno-religious Utopias and the Dynamics of Liberal Multiculturalism.” Propéthies et utopies religieuses au Canada, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard (ed.). Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2012. 191-215.

With Susan Fisher-Stoesz, “Utopia Enacted: The Exoduc of ‘Kanadier’ Old Colony Mennonites.” Propéthies et utopies religieuses au Canada, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard (ed.). Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2012. 217-237.

Review article of A Secular Age, Touchstone 28/2 (May 2010), 57-68.

“George Grant and Augustine of Hippo on Human Will and Technological Mastery,” Studies in Religion, 38/1 (2009), 99-112.

Documentary Films

"The Good Life: Decolonizing the Secular", 90 min runtime. Forthcoming, spring/summer 2019.

"Housing Refugees in Winnipeg." With Ray Silvius (Primary Investigator) and Hani Al Ubeady (Co-investigator) (in production).

Manuscripts in Progress

Book Manuscript: “Recovering Transcendence in a Secular Age: Charles Taylor’s Catholic Thought.” Under contract with University of Notre Dame Press.