Co-Sponsored by the Catholic Student Organization, UIS Diversity Center, and NPR Illinois / 91.9 UIS

Joseph Pearce’s talk will take the audience through his journey from racist revolutionary to his rejection of that ideology. Before he became a well-known college professor of literature, Pearce was a leader of the National Front, a British-nationalist, white-supremacist group. Pearce will chronicle his life from disseminating literature extolling the virtues of the white race, to organizing pro-fascist concerts and brawling on the streets, to his imprisonment for inciting racial hatred, and finally to the role that important literary figures played in his conversion from from radical revolutionary to Catholic author.

Joseph Pearce is Tolkien & Lewis Chair in Literary Studies at Holy Apostles College & Seminary and Senior Editor at the Augustine Institute. He is editor of the St. Austin Review,series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, and executive director of Catholic Courses. Hisbooks include The Quest for Shakespeare, Tolkien: Man and Myth, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis and The Catholic Church, Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc.