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Spring 2007 Core Humanities Lecture Series
Core Humanities Distinguished Professors
Jen Hill of the English Department is Fitzgerald Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, 2005-2007.
Valerie Weinstein of Foreign Languages (German) is Sanford Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, 2006-2008.
Tom Nickles of Philosophy is Crowley Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, 2005-2007.
Jen Hill - Tuesday, March 13, 3:00pm, OSN 102 "Precisely Indistinct: The Art and Nonsense of Edward Lear"
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Valerie Weinstein - Thursday, April 5, 2:30pm, OSN 102
"Aging After Auschwitz" Best known for his philosophical essays on his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, At the Mind's Limits (Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne), Jean Améry spoke and wrote on a variety of subjects including, most famously, aging and suicide. This talk will focus on Améry's essay collection On Aging, which presents his view of the relationship of the aging individual to time, the body, society, culture, and death. Interpreting his own aging within a 20th century European intellectual framework, Améry characterizes aging as a process of alienation. By examining Améry's work in its historical and intellectual contexts as well as in light of gerontological research on aging Holocaust survivors, this talk will suggest that Améry's cynical view is an account not simply of aging, but of "aging after Auschwitz," both for survivors themselves and, more broadly, for members of cultures affected by the trauma of the Holocaust. |
Tom Nickles - Tuesday, April 17, 3:00pm, OSN 102 "The Science Wars: A Quick Guide to the Hostilities" ‘The science wars’ could refer to many things in the history o f modern science, from early run-ins with the Catholic Church or Newton’s nationalistic priority dispute with Leibniz to Lysen koism in the Soviet Union or the latest creationist controversy in the USA. However, the science wars I shall discuss are the largely international and academic ones that broke out visibly in the 1990s. What were (and are) they about? Are they “merely academic” and therefore (?) of no great consequence, or do they signal something bigger such as the end of the Enlightenment and the onset of postmodernity? Are these science wars part of the larger “culture wars”? Could these developments spell the end of science as we know it?
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Known for “The Owl and the Pussycat” and for nonsense verses and illustrations that regularly appeared in the humor magazine Punch, Victorian writer and artist Edward Lear also had careers as a scientific illustrator and as a panoramic landscape painter. This talk will examine the relationship of the very small to the very large, the realistic to the nonsensical, and the precise to the imprecise in Lear’s literary and artistic work. 
