Torture, Slavery and Utopia: Ancient Greeks in the 21st Cent
Professor of Classics, University of California, San Diego
Torture, Slavery and Utopia: Ancient Greeks in the 21st Century
September 30, 2004 @ 7:30 pm
Chazen Museum of Art, Room L160
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Drawing on research into the period of empire after the death of Alexander the Great, Page du Bois reveals the brutal truth of slavery in ancient Greece. Striking dramatic contrasts between this disturbing reality and the dreams of utopia that flourished during the same period, du Bois will seek to connect this history to the our own historical moment—a time rich in similarly extreme contrasts.
Page du Bois is the author of Slaves and Other Objects (University of Chicago press, 2003); Trojan Horses: Saving the Classics from Conservatives (New York University Press, 2001); Sappho is Burning (University of Chicago Press, 1995), and Torture and Truth (New York University Press, 1991). She has taught in the University of California system since 1972.
Michael Taussig
Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
What Color is the Sacred?
October 14, 2004 @ 7:30 pm
Red Gym
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
In 1938, Surrealist ethnographer Michel Leiris delivered a lecture entitled "The Sacred in Everyday Life," which ended with a question. Sixty years later, Michael Taussig tries to answer this question. Diving into a lifetime of fieldwork and research on ritual, shamanism, and borrowing from the writings of William S. Burroughs, Walter Benjamin, and Herman Melville, Taussig will explore the nature of color and its role in the sacredness of everyday life.
Michael Taussig is a distinguished anthropologist whose work is based on extensive fieldwork in South and Central America. His writing incorporates ethnography, story-telling, and theory, and since 1975 he has published nine books, including: Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (University of Chicago Press, 1987); The Nervous System (Routledge, 1993); Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (Routledge, 1992); The Magic of the State (Routledge, 1996), and, most recently, My Cocaine Museum (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Taussig earned a degree in medicine in 1964 from the University of Sydney, a MA in sociology from the London School of Economics and a PhD in anthropology from the University of London.
Susan Neiman
Director, Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany
Evil After Kant
November 11, 2004 @ 7:30 pm
Red Gym
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Our definition of "evil" is being constantly transformed by disasters both natural and man-made. It has also been molded by the work of thinkers and writers who, in coming to terms with a rationalized world, turned the examination of evil into a major direction in modern philosophy. In Evil After Kant, Susan Neiman will look at the idea of evil in the wake of Emmanuel Kant’s philosophy.
Susan Neimanis the director of the Einstein Forum, a multi-disciplinary center for the humanities and sciences in Potsdam, Germany. Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Free University of Berlin, and was professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv Universities before joining the Einstein Forum. Her books include Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin (Random House, 1992), and Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2002).
Roger Chartier
Directeur d'Études, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, Annenberg Visiting Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Jack Cade, the Skin of an Innocent Lamb, and the Printing Press: Written Culture Between Authority and Hatred in Early Modern Europe
January 20, 2005 @ 7:30 pm
Red Gym
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Recognized internationally for his work on the history of books, printing, and literary culture, Roger Chartier’s work virtually defines interdisciplinarity. Chartier's articles and books have been translated into ten different languages; the most recent of these to appear in English are Publishing Drama in Early Modern Europe (British Library, 1999) and A History of Reading in the West (Polity, 1999). Chartier has served as Professeur of history at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand, Paris, and the University of Paris. This is his first visit to Madison.
Rebecca Solnit
Writer, Critic and Curator
Standing on Top of Golden Hours: Catastrophe, Revolution, Carnival, and the Suspension of Everyday Life
February 24, 2005 @ 7:30 pm
1800 Engineering Hall
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
Revolutionary moments, disasters, and emergencies can bring individuals together, reinforcing a sense of community and shared purpose. During these short-lived times of shared trauma, an immersion in the present and a sense of connection emerges—a form of camaraderie that everyday life tends to dilute or eliminate. Drawing from her recent books Wanderlust and Hope in the Dark, accounts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the Zapatista revolt, Solnit will talk about the suspension of everyday life in these moments.
In addition to Wanderlust and Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit’s numerous books include Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism (Verso, 2000), As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (University of Georgia Press, 2001), and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (Viking, 2003). Solnit is a contributing editor to Art Issues and Creative Camera, a regular contributor to Sierra magazine, and the author of numerous exhibition essays.
Adam Hochschild
Journalist, Author, Historian
12 Men in a Printing Shop, May 22, 1787: A Great Human Rights Movement is Born
April 28, 2005 @ 7:30 pm
Music Hall
This event is one of the Humanities Without Boundaries events.
The Center is delighted to announce the addition of Adam Hochschild to the 2004-2005 Humanities Without Boundaries lecture series. This lecture replaces the originally scheduled visit of scholar Judith Butler. Hochschild's lecture will explore an episode in his recent book, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves.
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. It was followed by The Mirror at Midnight (1990) and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994). Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels won the 1998 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. Hochschild's books have been translated into five languages and have won prizes from the Overseas Press Club of America, the World Affairs Council, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation, and the Society of American Travel Writers. Three of his books - including King Leopold's Ghost - have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review and Library Journal. King Leopold's Ghost was also awarded the 1998 California Book Awards gold medal for nonfiction. Hochschild has also written for the New Yorker, Harper's, New York Review of Books, New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones (which he co-founded), The Nation, and many other magazines and newspapers. A former commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," he teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
