3502 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089

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Join the USC Society of Fellows for a talk by Lisa Bitel, professor of history and religion at USC Dornsife, on the topic of Joe Coleman. A former construction worker, in 2007 he began to see and converse with the Virgin Mary. Joe started advertising the Virgin’s future visits to Ireland, beginning with her appearance in October at Knock, Co. Mayo, an internationally famous shrine commemorating a Marian apparition of 1879. Over the last two centuries, thousands of people across faith traditions have claimed to experience visions, apparitions, miracles, out of body experiences, and other supernatural events. Yet the case of Joe Coleman stands out among the history of modern Marian apparitions.

Joe’s visionary career is unique because witnesses so quickly authenticated Joe’s apparitions and then just as quickly dismissed them; and because accounts of Joe’s rise and fall — in both text and images — are accessible and many. Professor Bitel raises a simple question: Given the environment of Joe’s apparitional experience — Christian traditions of visionary experience, evolving iconographies of the Virgin, visual traditions of apparitions, and modern technologies of vision, communication, and discernment, not to mention Ireland’s fraught historical relationship with Catholicism and increasing withdrawal from the faith — how did Joe’s witnesses assess his apparition events and derive religious meaning from the visions? And why did they come to dismiss Joe?

Please complete the RSVP form for lunch and to receive the pre-circulated paper. 

Photo: Visionaries Joe Coleman and Keith Henderson at Knock, co. Mayo, Ireland in 2009. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons, Irish Times.

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