Daniel Coleman

Daniel Coleman has long been fascinated by the poetic power of narrative arts to generate a sense of place and community, critical social engagement and mindfulness, and especially wonder. As a reader, writer, and teacher, he is compelled by the long, slow project of unlearning naturalized injustices and sanctioned ignorance and is witness to the fact that fresh ways to learn still occur and have transformative power. Although he has committed considerable effort to learning in and from the natural world, he is still a bookish person who loves the learning that is essential to writing. He has written scholarly books about literature, masculinity, migration, and whiteness in Canada, and he has written literary non-fiction books about his upbringing among missionaries in Ethiopia, about the spiritual and cultural politics of reading, and about eco-human relations in Hamilton, Ontario, the post-industrial city where he lives in the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas of the New Credit. He has edited books on early Canadian literary cultures, postcolonial masculinities, race, Caribbean-Canadian literature, the state of the humanities in Canadian universities, the creativity and resilience of refugee-d and Indigenous peoples, and international scholarship on Canadian literatures. He loves being co-director with his friend and colleague, Lorraine York, of CCENA, McMaster’s Centre for Community Engaged Narrative Arts.