Professor of Communication Arts, Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities, UW-Madison
Words That Changed American History: Oratory, Politics, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century
February 1, 2006
Chazen Museum of Art, Room L160
This event is one of the Focus on the Humanities events.
Drawing on his new book Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999 (2006, Oxford University Press), Professor Lucas will explore the artistry and impact of path-breaking public addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Barbara Jordan, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton. The lecture will include historic video footage of each speaker in action.
An expert on American political discourse from the Declaration of Independence to the present, Stephen Lucas was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, is a frequent guest on news and public affairs programs, and has spoken to enthusiastic audiences around the globe. His books include Portents of Rebellion: Rhetoric and Revolution in Philadelphia, 1765-1776, The Art of Public Speaking, and The Quotable George Washington.
David Sorkin
Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison
How Secular Was the Enlightenment? Six Faces of Reasonable Belief, 1689-1789
March 22, 2006
Chazen Museum of Art, Room L160
This event is one of the Focus on the Humanities events.
Focusing on the myth of a secular Enlightenment, David Sorkin will re-examine the relationship of the Enlightenment to religion, departing from the conventional approach that considers the attitude of canonical Enlightenment thinkers (Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Diderot, Lessing and Kant) to religion, by instead asking how thinkers in the major religious traditions (Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Judaism) dealt with the science (Newton) and philosophy of the Enlightenment (ideas of reason, natural religion, toleration). It will argue that if we wish to continue to see the Enlightenment as the fount of modern culture, then we must recognize that it was inextricably linked to religious belief.
David Sorkin is the author of The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (1987), Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996) and The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought (2000). He is associate editor of The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (2002) and is co-editor of two other volumes. He has received grants from the British Academy, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris); the Max Planck Institut für Geschichte (Göttingen); and All Souls College, Oxford.
Funded through the generous support of the Anonymous Fund and in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities.
