John Caruana
Selected Publications & Presentations
Edited Book
John Caruana and Mark Cauchi, eds, Immanent Frames: Postsecular Cinema between Malick and von Trier (SUNY Press, forthcoming)
Edited Special Journal Issue
John Caruana and Mark Cauchi, eds, Special issue of Symposium: Varieties of Continental Thought and Religion 20:1 (2016), pp. 1-105.
Refereed Articles and Book Chapters
“Michel Henry and the Overcoming of the Gnostic Currents of Modernity,” In Hymns to Life eds, Steven DeLay and Steven Nemes, (Lexington Books, forthcoming)
“‘My Sister Reality’: The Franciscan Sources of Bazin’s Philosophy of Cinema,” in Explorations in Film and Christianity: Movement as Immobility, eds. Sérgio Dias Branco and Rita Benis (Routledge, forthcoming).
“Doubt in the Cinema of Spiritual Crisis,” in The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Film, ed. Gerard P. Loughlin (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
“‘Living in our Heads’: The Spiritual Roots of the Disembodied Subject in Nietzsche and Taylor” in Finding Meaning: Essays on Philosophy, Nihilism, and the Death of God, ed. Steven Delay (Wipf & Stock, 2023).
“Deleuze’s ‘Conversion of Belief’: The Time-Image and the Disruption of Cinema’s Secularist Origins,” Cinema and Secularism, ed. M. Cauchi (Bloomsbury, 2024).
“Repetition and Belief: A Kierkegaardian Reading of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life,” in Immanent Frames: Postsecular Cinema between Malick and von Trier, eds. J. Caruana and M. Cauchi (SUNY Press, 2018).
“What is Postsecular Cinema?” in Postsecular Cinema between Malick and von Trier, eds. J. Caruana and M. Cauchi (SUNY Press, 2018) [co-authored with M. Cauchi].
“The Dardenne Brothers and the Invisible Ethical Drama: Faith without Faith,” in special issue of Religions (Topic: Film and Lived Theology, ed. Joseph Kickasola) 7:5 (2016).
“Introduction: Varieties of Continental Thought and Religion,” in Symposium(2016), pp. 1-10 [co-authored with M. Cauchi]
“The Subject in Crisis: Kristeva on Love, Faith, and Nihilism,” Thinking about Love: Essays in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, eds. Antonio Calcagno and Diane Enns (Penn State University Press, 2015)
“Blanchot,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, ed. Stephen Ross (London: Routledge, 2013).
“Heidegger,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, ed., Stephen Ross (London: Routledge, 2013).
“Bruno Dumont’s Cinema: Nihilism and the Collapse of the Christian Imaginary,” in Religion in Contemporary European Cinema: The Postsecular Constellation, eds. C. Bradatan and C. Ungureanu (New York: Routledge, 2014)
“Kieslowski and Kiarostami: A Metaphysical Cinema,” in After Kieslowski: The Legacy of Krzysztof Kieslowski, ed. S. Woodward (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009).
“Cinematic Epiphanies: Eric Rohmer and the Transcendence of the Ordinary,” in Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, ed. K. R. Morefield(Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).
“‘Not Ethics, Not Ethics Alone, but the Holy’: Levinas on Ethics and Holiness,” Journal of Religious Ethics 34:4 (2006), 561-583.
“The Drama of Being: Levinas and the History of Philosophy,” Continental Philosophy Review 40:3 (2007), 251-273.
“Levinas” (encyclopedia article), in Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics, ed. M. Cohen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006)
“Levinas’s Critique of the Sacred,” International Philosophical Quarterly 42: 4 (2002), 519-534.
“The Catastrophic ‘Site and Non-Site’ of Proximity: Redeeming the Disaster of Being,” International Studies in Philosophy 30:1 (1998), 33-46.
“Mourning and Mimesis: The Freudian Ethics of Theodor Adorno,” Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis 3:2 (1996), 89-108.
Interviews
“The Insistence of Religion in Philosophy: An Interview with John D. Caputo,” in John Caruana and Mark Cauchi, eds, Special Issue of Symposium: Varieties of Continental Thought and Religion (2016), pp. 11-31.
Reviews
“Return of the Repressed,” Rev of Simone Weil and Theology by Lucian Stone and Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, Los Angeles Review of Books 28 April 2014, <https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/return-repressed>. 2000 words
“Remembering the Nameless: Review of E. Wyschogrod’s An Ethics of Remembering,” Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Technology 19 (2000), 411–413.
“Review of A. Peperzak’s Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,” Philosophy in Review 18:4 (1998), 299-300.
Conference Presentations
“Modernity’s Albatross: Massimo Cacciari on Crisis and Catastrophe,” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), Toronto, Oct. 13, 2023
“Living in our Heads: Genealogies of Excarnation in Nietzsche and Taylor,” Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SoPheRE) Annual Conference, University of Galway, Ireland, August 17, 2023.
“Massimo Cacciari’s Retrieval of St. Francis: The Spiritual Roots of our Contemporary Ecological Crisis,” Society for Italian Philosophy, June 9, 2023
“Becoming ‘Poor in Spirit’: Massimo Cacciari’s Encounter with Dante’s Francis,” online conference, Society for Italian Philosophy, November 7, 2021
“Michel Henry’s Religious Turn: Thinking about Life and God in an Age of Technological Escapism,” International Philosophy Festival, Naples and Ischia, Italy, September 27, 2019.
“From Gyges to the Modern Self: Michel Henry and Michael Haneke,” Human Nature, Ischia, Italy, September 28, 2018.
“Excarnation and the Flight from Oneself: The Cinema of Michael Haneke,” Film-Philosophy, Gothenburg, Sweden, July 3, 2018.
“Restoring our Belief in the World: Trust and Affect in Kierkegaard and Deleuze,” Affect and the God of the Philosophers Conference, Dayton, OH, Feb 24-15, 2018.
“‘Little Sister Reality’: André Bazin and the Incarnality of Cinema,” Movement as Immobility Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 24, 2017.
“Believing in this World: Deleuze and Kierkegaard on the Paradox of Belief,” Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, Toronto, ON, September 30, 2017.
“Postsecular Cinema in an Atheist Key,” Society For Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, USA, March 23, 2017
“Deleuze and Kierkegaard on the Paradox of Belief: Strange Encounters at the Cinema,” Film-Philosophy Conference, Edinburgh, UK, July 7, 2016
“Revisiting Bresson's ‘Transcendental Style’: Jean-Luc Marion, Cinema, and the Saturated Phenomenon,” Film-Philosophy Conference, Oxford, UK, July 22, 2015
“Createdness and Giftedness of the World in Terrence Malick's Cinema,” Film-Philosophy Conference, Glasgow, UK, July 3, 2014
“Jean-Luc Marion on the Silence and Death of God,” American Academy of Religion Western Division, Calgary, May 12, 2014
“World, Loss, and Grace: Terrence Malick’s Kierkegaardian Repetition,” Film-Philosophy Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 11, 2013
“Believing at the End of the World: Religion, Cinema, Philosophy” American Academy of Religion East Division, Toronto, May 11, 2013
“Bruno Dumont’s Cinema: Nihilism and the Collapse of the Christian Imaginary,” Religion and Secularity in Contemporary European Cinema, Barcelona, Oct. 7, 2011
“Levinas and the ‘Childhood Crisis’ of our Age: Beyond the Religion-Atheism Divide,” International Conference on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Toulouse, France, July 6, 2010.
“And He Descended into Hell: Between Immanence and Transcendence,” Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion, Liverpool, UK, June 26, 2009.
“‘What Strange Magician Fills Your Heaven?’ Levinas and the Good,” Society for Existentialist and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Vancouver, BC, May 30, 2008
“Representing the Hidden Drama of Ethics: Levinas and the Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers,” Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, October 6, 2007; Looking Through a Glass Darkly Conference, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, May 12, 2007.
“Disaster and Being in Blanchot and Levinas,” Strategies of Critique, Toronto, ON, April 4, 2006.
“Derrida’s Legacy,” Panel Organizer and Commentary on S. Pinardi’s “Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind,” Society for Existentialist and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, London, ON, May 29, 2005.
“The Role of Conscience in Recent Continental Thought,” International Social Theory Consortium, Toronto, ON, June 8, 2004.
“Martin Buber and the Politics of I and Thou,” Commentary on N. Zunic’s “Persons and Community,” Society for Existentialist and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Winnipeg, MB, May 31, 2004.
“Emmanuel Levinas on the Drama of Being,” Society for Existentialist and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Halifax, NS, May 30, 2003.
“Conscience in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Levinas,” Canadian Philosophical Association meeting, Quebec City, QC, May 28, 2001.
“Levinas’s Critique of the Sacred,” Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought, Quebec City, QC, May 26, 2001.
“‘Disaster’ to ‘Desire:’ Seeking the Hidden Good in Levinas,” Canadian Philosophical Association meeting, Sherbrooke, QC, June 3, 1999.
“The Concept of the ‘il y a’ in the Early Levinas,” Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought, Ottawa, ON, May 29, 1998.
“Catastrophic Ethics: Emmanuel Levinas on Proximity,” Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture Conference, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, April 21, 1997.
INVITED TALKS
“Concrete Metaphysics: Finding Our Way Out of the Labyrinth. Online Roundtable Discussion with Massimo Cacciari. Theorizing Italy, March 22, 2024. Online.
Respondent to Diane’s Enns’ Keynote Presentation, Anabaptists and Philosophy Roundtable, Feb. 16, 2022 [online Zoom session]
“Cinema in an Age of Distraction,” Regis College, University of Toronto, Nov. 21, 2019.
“Kierkegaard and Cinema: Terrence’s Malick’s The Tree of Life,” Kierkegaard Circle, University of Toronto, Dec. 1, 2017.
“What is Postsecular Cinema?” TIFF Lightbox, Toronto, April 3, 2017.
“The Postsecular in Contemporary Culture,” The Koffler Gallery, Toronto, ON, Nov. 22, 2015.
“Julia Kristeva on Nihilism and Faith: Our Late Modern Impasse,” McMaster Department of Philosophy, Hamilton, ON, Sept. 25, 2015.