Transforming Your Neighborhood Into the Magic Kingdom – Whole Community Makeovers Through the Performing Arts

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When?  Thursday, April 5, 2018 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. “All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare, and that can be true for your community or immediate neighborhood as well.  You can make it come alive at any time through interactive dance, music, and drama.  You can turn the street where you live into the magic kingdom for a breathless little while. Sam Provenzano and Christine Gwillim, advanced degree candidates in theater and dance at the University of Texas (Austin), will discuss how you can take turn a bounded space like a university campus, a museum, or a neighborhood with its shops and houses and turn it into a site for performance art that engages people and has them look at […]

Divinatory Esthetics – Critically Engaging Denver Poets Through Music

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When?  Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. Metropolitan State University professor and well-known musician and composer Roger Green will attempt to identify a rehabilitated notion of literature by addressing a recent trend among Denver writers dealing with “divination”.  He will specifically use examples of his work using musical performance and composition to accompany multiple writers: Laird Hunt, Selah Saterstrom, Eleni Sikelianos, and Anne Waldman, all of whom are associated both with Denver and the independent Minneapolis based publisher, Coffeehouse Press. Intentionally blurring any unnecessary binary between “artist” and “critic”, Roger argues that these writers have been pointing to more nuanced interpretations of divination that are useful to contemporary writing, literary theory and philosophy. The following sound tracks […]

Theory of The Border – Talk And Book Signing By Thomas Nail

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When?  Thursday, February 15, 2018 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. Despite — and perhaps because of — increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, University of Denver philosopher Thomas Nail reinterprets  history from the perspective of the […]

Disrupting The Mythologies Of Machismo – Talk And Book Signing By Luis León – EVENT CANCELLED!

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EVENT CANCELLED BECAUSE OF AUTHOR ILLNESS!   Please stayed tuned for rescheduling announcement. When?  Thursday, January 18, 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), founder of the United Farm Workers and activist for Mexican-American rights, modeled a distinct spirituality for Latino men involving fraternity, self-sacrifice, and respecting women and the LGBT community.The example of his ritual life and spiritual teaching disrupted mythologies of machismo. In his current research, Luis León explores this similar macho disruption among Latino men, particularly within the conversion narratives of those who have converted from Catholicism to Pentecostalism. Dr. Luis León is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver.  He is the author of two books – The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders (Berkeley: […]

The Cynic And The Fool – Book Signing And Talk By Tad Delay

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When?  Thursday, November 9, 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. The questioning of religion is the beginning of a flood, one that cannot be contained and will soon drown every theological, political, economic, and cultural orthodoxy that pledged its allegiance to a sinking cause. We are in just such an era of revolt, and those with eyes to see are learning to interrogate motives. When we are told of an idea that cannot possibly be true, the most immediate question is this: does the speaker so very foolishly believe their own words, or is the person a cynic who knows perfectly well how they manipulate the truth? As individual personalities transform into a collective drive, the aftermath is a brutal […]

Divinatory Poetics – Public Talk And Book Signing by Selah Saterstrom

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When?  Thursday, October 12, 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. Selah Saterstrom’s creative work draws heavily from her life growing up in the Spiritual Church Movement in Natchez, Mississippi. As a university student, she studied Biblical hermeneutics and was influenced by writers such as Stephen Moore (Derrida & Foucault at the Foot of the Cross, God’s Gym).  Her work addresses the tensions and consonances between postmodern hermeneutics and the spiritualist tradition in which she was raised.  While divinatory tactics, such as tarot card reading, keep a fashionable place in New Age culture, Saterstrom’s work with divination comes from a lineage of root workers in the South and runs much deeper than a fad.   Saterstrom’s novels – The Pink Institution; The Meat and Spirit Plan; and Slab […]

A Half Century Of Postmodernism – Public Talk And Book Signing By Carl Raschke On His Latest Work

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When?  Thursday, September 21, 6:30-8:30 Where? BookBar, 4280 Tennyson Street, Denver, CO 80212, 303-284-0194 BookBar “is a bookshop for wine lovers. A wine bar for book shoppers. And a fabulous cafe, too”. Sponsored by Cri Hub.  Admission free and open to the public.  Map. The term “postmodernism” has functioned as a term of both celebration and rebuke for much of contemporary history since the Vietnam era.   It has especially defined the spiritual heritage of the West during that period, serving as a badge of identity for religious seekers of three generations as well as the perennial whipping boy for conservatives and fundamentalists. What has postmodernism wrought, and is it finally over?  Come hear University of Denver Professor Carl Raschke, internationally recognized as the “inventor” of religious postmodernism, answer these questions while reflecting on the changes and upheaval in our culture during the past half -century.  Title: “Bye, Bye Xanadu: Postmodernism as our 50-Year Spiritual Odyssey From the Hippies To […]

Critical Conversations – Taking The Spiritual Temperature Of Our Time

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Starting in September 2017 CRI launches a series of  talks entitled Critical Conversations by and with Denver-based writers and public intellectuals on topics connected to their new books, which have been just recently published. Critical Conversations is a partnership with BookBar, 4280 Tennyson St, Denver, CO 80212 and will be held once a month on Thursday evenings in September, October, and November. The first “conversations” will focus on the theme “Taking the Spiritual Temperature Of Our Time”, an exploration of the ways in which contemporary arts and culture as well as politics are both infused with and shaped by the deeper longings of the heart, including inklings of an immaterial realm. All sessions are from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. .  The fall schedule for Critical Conversations is as follows: Thursday, September 21. Carl Raschke.   Author of Force of God, GloboChrist, Fire And Roses, and More. Professor of Religious Studies, University of Denver.  Talk: “Bye, Bye Xanadu: Postmodernism […]

CRI Hosts Discussion On The Transformative Power Of The Arts In Vienna

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THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE ARTS. Joy Sawyer from Denver’s Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop talks expounds on the power of poetry at the Donauhof renovation project last Friday evening in Vienna. Her presentation was part of a special CRI conversation among writers, musicians, and visual artists (both American and Austrian) entitled “The Arts in Action”. How does art make a difference in today’s conflicted and storm-tossed world?

Taking Back Literature – Can Authors, Publishers, and Booksellers Mobilize Against the Corporatocracy’s Hostile Takeover of the Industry?

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Denver, Colorado Sunday, July 23 7-9:30 p.m. The Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop Lighthouse Writers Workshop, 1515 Race St. Denver, CO 80206 Donations appreciated. Map With novelist Nick Arvin, nonfiction author Tad DeLay, poet and Counterpath publisher Julie Carr, Conundrum Press publisher Caleb Seeling, and BookBar owner Nicole Sullivan We are all writers now. Whether through traditional industry publishing or self-publishing, in print or online, we can push new ideas and literature to interested readers. Unfortunately, the current situation is dire for authors, publishers, and booksellers; the reading public suffers along with them. Though over a million new books are published each year, only one percent land in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Eighty percent of books sell less than one hundred copies per year. A book can reach the New York Times bestseller list without earning enough in royalties to push the author above the poverty line. Amazon promised and delivered unprecedented global access […]