DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
Lincoln: The Great Emancipator?
September 19, 2002 @ 7:30 pm
Great Hall, Memorial Union
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
The lecture will trace the evolution of Lincoln's views and actions regarding slavery and race, from the early days of his political career to the end of the Civil War. Foner will discuss recent controversies regarding Lincoln's racial attitudes, and assess how much credit he should be given for the emancipation of American slaves.
Foner's work concentrates on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history, and the history of American race relations. His most recent book, a collection of essays, Who Owns History: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, was described in the New York Times as a "wonderfully readable account of the twists and turns in twentieth-century American history."
His other books include The Story of American Freedom; Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War; Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy and Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, winner of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, Avery O. Craven Prize, Owsley Award, Lionel Trilling Prize, and Los Angeles Times Book Award. He edited The New American History for the American Historical Association, and, with John A.Garraty, The Reader's Companion to American History.
Foner is also the curator of A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln, a historical exhibition that opened at the Chicago Historical Society in 1990, and of America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, a traveling exhibit first shown at the Virginia Historical Society in 1996.
Houston A. Baker, Jr.
Susan Fox and George D. Beischer Professor of English, Duke University
Remembering Race: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Betrayal of Black Intellectuals
October 17, 2002 @ 7:30 pm
Memorial Union
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Baker's talk will examine King's legacy as envisioned by black centrist and neo-conservative intellectuals. He suggests that the work of these intellectuals serves not only to subvert the best aims of King's life and labors, but also runs contrary to the best interests of the black majority.
Considered one of America's most important literary scholars, Baker has written extensively-sometimes controversially-on black literature and poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, blues music, social progress, and black culture generally. His provocative ideas have helped to shape the field of African American studies. He has authored or edited over 20 books, including, most recently, Turning South Again: Re-Thinking Modernism / Re-Reading Booker T., and Critical Memory: Public Spheres, African American Writing and Black Fathers and Sons in America.
Baker has previously served as president of the Modern Language Association and currently edits American Literature, the oldest journal of American literary studies. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including Guggenheim, John Hay Whitney and Rockefeller fellowships. Also a published poet, Baker's latest volume of verse is Passing Over.
Amy Gutmann
Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
Identity Group Politics in Democracy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
November 14, 2002 @ 7:30 pm
Memorial Union
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
People identify in groups by race, religion, class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and other social markers. Gutmann explores the critical role that identity groups play in democracies, and she asks whether identity groups aid or impede democratic justice. Her democratic perspective does justice to identity groups while recognizing that they cannot be counted on to do likewise to others.
A noted political theorist and ethicist, Gutmann has taught on political philosophy, democratic theory, the history of political thought, and practical ethics. Her numerous published works include Democratic Education; Democracy and Disagreement; Ethics and Politics (with Dennis Thompson); and Color Conscious (with K. Anthony Appiah), which won the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Human Rights Award for the "outstanding book on the subject of human rights in North America."
Currently provost at Princeton University, Gutmann has lectured throughout the world. She is president of the American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political Science, and the National Academy of Education. She is also the recipient of the President's Distinguished Teaching Award.
Wendy Doniger
Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago
Sex and Gender in the Kamasutra
January 30, 2003 @ 7:30 pm
Music Hall
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
The Kamasutra was written in the third century CE during the Gupta period-India's "classical" age. Professor Doniger, whose new translation of the Kamasutra was published in June 2002 (Oxford University Press), believes that the text is "really about power, politics, and sex." Doniger observes that the book provides guidance beyond sexual positions and technique, including advice-for both women and men-on dumping unsatisfactory partners. But more importantly, the Kamasutra is also a source for information in the ways in which pleasure, wealth, and power were defined in India's classical period. For Doniger, the Kamasutra is a multifaceted work of literature, the true depth of which continues to be uncovered.
Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She also serves in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committees on Social Thought and the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College. She earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University, and holds a D.Phil. from Oxford University. Her teaching covers a broad spectrum, including cross-cultural themes, mythology, literature, law, gender, and ecology. In addition to her recent translation of the Kamasutra for Oxford University Press, Her books (published under the name Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty) include the Penguin Classics Hindu Myths A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit, The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit, and The Laws of Manu. She has also published Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; and several books with the University of Chicago Press, including Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts, and Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities. Under the name Wendy Doniger, she has edited Mythologies, an English-language edition of Yves Bonnefoy's 1,300-page Dictionnaire des Mythologies, and published Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India.
Alexander Nehamas
Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
Virtues of Admiration: Aesthetics, Art, and the Rest of Life
April 24, 2003 @ 7:30 pm
Red Gym
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Alexander Nehamas is the Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He was founding director of the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, and chair of the Council of the Humanities and Program in Hellenic Studies. Having earned his Ph.D. at Princeton, he taught initially at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pennsylvania before returning to Princeton. Nehamas's intellectual interests include Greek philosophy, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, the public role of philosophers, individuality, and the place of philosophy in what he calls "the art of living." His published works include Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985), The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (1998), and Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates (1999), as well as translations of Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus (1989, 1995).
Danielle Allen
Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures, Politics, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Talking to Strangers: On Citizenship and Trust
May 8, 2003 @ 7:30 pm
Memorial Union
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
The essential characteristic of politics is its basis in the relations between people, and between people and governments. Civility and trust are therefore critical to the success of politics, and to democracy in particular. Classicist and Political Danielle Allen of the University of Chicago will explore this issue in her lecture Talking to Strangers: On Citizenship and Trust. Allen, an emerging scholar who holds dual appointments in the departments of Classics and Political Science at the University of Chicago, focuses her work on rhetoric, trust, and civic dialogue in the political cultures of our time and that of classical-era Athens.
Danielle Allen is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures, Politics, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She received an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in classics from King's College, Cambridge University, and an additional M.A. and Ph.D in government from Harvard University. A recent MacArthur "genius grant" fellowship winner, Allen combines her interest in the literature, politics, and history of ancient Greece with a concern for modern American political and legal history and democratic theory. She is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000) and the forthcoming Democratic Entanglements Rhetoric, Distrust, and Sacrifice, a comparison of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, and Ralph Ellison and their views on distrust and rhetoric. In addition to the Macarthur fellowship, Allen has also received the Quarterly Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago.
