Dr. Carlos Colorado
Title: Professor; Chair
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 is a Mestizx scholar, whose research and teaching focus on secularism, colonialism, race and the politics of identity. He 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.
He is an expert on the work of the Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor and co-editor (with Justin Klassen) of . His current multi-year project project entitled “The Mixed-Race as Relationality Project: Thinking Mestizx/Métis Identities through Kinship Perspectives,” challenges the racialized and racializing concept of mixed-race as “racial mixedness” through articulations of relational identities among Mestizx and Métis people(s).
His feature-length documentary film, , explores the 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?
Dr. Colorado was a co-founder and the inaugural director of CLASS. Through that centre, he taught and helped coordinate a number of public Institutes and founded and chaired the Axworthy Distinguished Lecture Series from 2015-2018, hosting speakers including , awardee , Winona LaDuke, , , Edward Snowden, and . CBC’s Ideasbroadcast two episodes based on Axworthy Lectures: and . 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 served as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada from 2016-2021. He is currently the Vice-President of the University of 丁香园AV 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:
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
“Reconciliation and the Secular” Social Compass. 2020;67(1):72-85. Accessible at
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 .
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.
“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.
Manuscript in Progress
With Gareau, Paul L. “Indigenous|Settler Relations and Identity: Engaging Charles Taylor as a ‘Good Relative.’” Forthcoming
Documentary Film
"The Good Life: Decolonizing the Secular", 90 min runtime. . (contact for access).