Session III
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES
Screening of HANDS (1928) and BORDERLINE (1930)
Introductory comments by Jennifer Wild
Film Studies Center, Cobb Hall, room 307
Hands (Stella Simon and Miklos Bandy, Germany, 1927-28, 13 min; music performed by the composer Marc Blitzstein), and Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson, UK, 1930, 63 min; silent, with musical accompaniment) are films from the late silent period that examine race and gender relations through the lens of formal experimentation and modernist sensibility. By combining melodramatic narrative plots with avant-garde editing and decor, these films demonstrate the singular capacity of silent film language to visually convey the human experiences of passion and social injustice. Paul Robeson stars in Borderline.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE/CREATIVE WRITING
Peter O'Leary, Megan Stielstra, and Garin Cycholl
THE ART OF WRITING: THREE READINGS FROM THE COMMITTEE ON CREATIVE WRITING
Introductory comments by Janice Knight
Stuart 102
A generally savored moment in the spectator sport of American presidential politics is a misfire or gaffe before an audience. Recorded, disseminated and framed by evaluative commentary the mere "blooper" or would-be "out-take" is transformed. Whether or not an obvious "blooper" at the time, the gaffe is turned into an index of something deeper, something revelatory of personality or character or identity, a diagnostic bit of "truth" emergent despite all precaution and a negatively valuated symptom in our regime of "message" politics. Michael Silverstein, Professor of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Psychology will offer a talk followed by discussion.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE
Richard Strier
Bangs and Whimpers: The Two Texts of King Lear
Stuart 104
"The biggest scholarly revolution in Shakespeare
studies in the last couple of decades is the recognition that
the texts of a number of plays that we have grown up with are
constructions of 18th-century editors, and that it might make
sense to ""un-edit"" these plays. King Lear is at the center
of this discussion. There are Quarto and Folio versions of
the play, and these are quite different. I will explore the
differences between them, and try to show why they cannot
simply be combined (conflated, as we say)."
GERMANIC STUDIES/ ROMANCE LANGUAGES & LITERATURES/ DIVINITY SCHOOL
Robert Buch, Thomas Pavel, and Rana Choi
DOES LITERATURE IMITATE LIFE? ERICH AUERBACH'S MIMESIS
Harper 130
Auerbach's Mimesis (1946) is one of the most important critical works written in the twentieth century. In readings that combine an amazing range and erudition with a keen eye for detail and the particulars of literary texts, Auerbach explores literature's turn to ordinary reality as a worthy subject of representation. In this session, we want to revisit and discuss some of Auerbach's central arguments about writers' interest in the reality of human life. The first chapter of the book, "Odysseus's Scar," shall serve as a starting point.
HUMANITIES
SCREENING OF THE CKP REMEMBERS 1942-43 (2008)
Introductory comments by Bart Schultz
Stuart 105
The Civic Knowledge Project Remembers 1942-43--A documentary that recaptures the early history of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on the south side of Chicago. CORE co-founders James Robinson and George Houser revisit some of the sites of their early nonviolent protest activities, including the former site of the Jack Spratt Coffee House, at 47th and Kimbark, where they staged one of the first non violent sit-ins on behalf of civil rights in American history.
Humanities
Herman Sinaiko
WHO WAS SOCRATES AND WHAT DID HE DO?
Stuart 101
In my talk on "Socrates; Who was he and what did he do?" I will explore the peculiar fact that Socrates, the mortal enemy (according to the later tradition) of the sophists, was constantly identified as one of them by his contemporaries and he himself frequently appears in Plato's Dialogues as quite sympathetic and interested in them. Furthermore, his ambiguous relationship to the sophists also raises questions about his interest in earlier pre-Socratic thinkers such as Parmenides. My remarks are preliminary reflections on what I hope will be a comprehensive account of the Socratic career, at least as it is presented in Plato's Dialogues.
LINGUISTICS/ ANTHROPOLOGY
Alan Yu, Chris Kennedy, Robin Shoaps, and Jason Riggle
LANDAHL CENTER OPEN HOUSE: ASK A LINGUIST
Landahl Center
The Phonology Laboratory in the Karen Landahl Center for Linguistics Research (in the basement of the Social Science Research Building) will be opened on Humanities Day to greet visitors and to answer any questions visitors have about research in the lab and about language in general.
PHILOSOPHY
Ted Cohen
THE MYSTERY OF METAPHOR
Harper 140
TBD