Past Events

Spring 2013

Queneau Reading

Jacques Neefs (JHU French) and Rachel Galvin (JHU Humanities) read from Raymond Queneau's 1967 collection, Courir les rues, and Rachel Galvin's 2013 translation, Hitting the Streets

   April 29, 2013
   6:30 pm
   Gilman 208

François-David Sebbah

The Humanities Center hosted a lecture by François-David Sebbah (Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at Compiègne University of Technology--Sorbonne Universities).

     The Ghosts of the Digital Age:
     A Derridean Approach

     April 4, 2013, 4 pm
     Gilman 208

Rebecca Comay

The Humanities Center welcomed Rebecca Comay (University of Toronto Philosophy Department), who gave a lecture on Monday, March 25, and a seminar for graduate students on March 26.

Lecture: "Proust's Remains"
March 25, 4 - 6 pm
Humanities Center Seminar Room (Gilman 208)

Seminar: "Hegel's Last Words: Mourning and Melancholia at the end of the Phenomenology"
March 26, 10 am -12 pm
Tudor & Stuart Room (Gilman 288)
(the pre-circulated paper will be available in the Humanities Center office, Gilman 213)

Sari Nusseibeh

Associate of the Humanities Center, Professor of Islamic and Political Philosophy and President of the Al-Quds University, East Jerusalem, will present "The Israeli-Palestinian Impasse: A case study."

   March 13 Why Negotiations Sometimes
        Fail, And What to Do About This
   March 14 Are there alternatives to
         negotiations?
   March 15 Secular Faith and Political Ends

   4:00 pm in Gilman 208

The Graduate Students of the Humanities Center organized a conference, "Repetition: The Future Remembered, the Self Dismembered," held February 22-23, 2013, with keynote speakers Prof. Stephen Mulhall (Oxford University) and Prof. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (University of Wisconsin).

Jean-Luc Marion

Associate of the Humanities Center, Member of the Académie Française, Docteur d'État at Université Paris-Sorbonne, and Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology at the University of Chicago, gave three lectures on Courbet and on Descartes.

    February 12, 2013: "Courbet's
       Irrealism"
February 13, 2013: "Descartes on
       Passive Thought I"
    February 14, 2013: "Descartes on
       Passive Thought II"

    4:00 pm in Gilman 208

Fall 2012

Gregory F. Ball

   The Humanities Center hosted a
   lecture by Gregory F. Ball (JHU):
   "Why and How Do Birds Sing?
   Why is it Interesting?"

   November 29, 2012
   5:15 pm
   Gilman 208

Richard Moran and Martin Stone

   The Humanities Center hosted
   a presentation and discussion
   of a paper by Richard Moran (Brian D.
   Young Professor of Philosophy, Harvard
   University) and Martin Stone (Professor
   of Law, Yeshiva University):
   "'I'm building a treehouse': Anscombe
   on Expression of Intention"
   November 30, 2012
   4:00 pm
   Gilman 208

Mark McMorris

    The Humanities Center hosted
    a poetry reading by
    Mark McMorris

    November 27, 2012
    6:30 pm
    Gilman 208

Rachel Galvin

    The Humanities Center hosted
    a poetry reading by
    Rachel Galvin

    November 16, 2012
    6:00 pm
    Gilman 208

1962/2012: The World After Algerian Independence

   A conference hosted by the Centre Louis
   Marin, cosponsored by the Humanities
   Center and the Program for Jewish Studies;
   the Center for Advanced Media Studies; the
   Center for Africana Studies; the Program
   for the Study of Women, Gender, and
   Sexuality; the Race, Immigration, and
   Citizenship Program; and the departments
   of History, Anthropology, and German and
   Romance Languages and Literatures
   November 1 and 2, 2012
   Click here for a schedule

Islamic Studies and the Literary Imagination

   A workshop co-sponsored by
   The Humanities Center, the departments
   of Anthopology, History, and the History
   of Art, The Arrighi Center and The Office of
   the Dean of Arts & Sciences

   October 27, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
   Donovan room, Gilman 130D

Eli Friedlander

Associate of the Humanities Center and Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University

   October 10: "Missing a Step up the Ladder"
   October 11: "Ethics and Significance"
   October 12: "The Life of Colors"

   4:00 pm
   Gilman 208

Philippe Van Haute

    The Humanities Center welcomed
    Philippe Van Haute, Radboud University
    Nijmegen

    "Humankind: A Sick Animal?
    On the Meaning and Significance of
    Freud’s Primacy of Sexuality"

    October 1, 2012, 4 pm, Gilman 208

Spring 2012

Eli Friedlander

Associate of the Humanities Center and Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University

April 30: "Problems of Content in
       Kant's Aesthetics"
    May 1: "The Appearance of the Ideal of
       Philosophical Questioning in the
       Work of Art"
    May 2: "On Types, the Everyday and
       Fantasy in Benjamin"

    4 pm
    Gilman 208

Thomas Elsaesser

   The Humanities Center and the
   Center for Advanced Media Studies
   welcomed Thomas Elsaesser,
   Professor Emeritus, Department of
   Media and Culture, University of
   Amsterdam

      "Black Suns and a Bright Planet:
      Lars von Trier's Melancholia"

    April 23, 5:15 pm, Gilman 208

Sari Nusseibeh

Associate of the Humanities Center, Professor of Islamic and Political Philosophy and President of the Al-Quds University, East Jerusalem

April 17: "On Whether One is
   Unique"
April 18: "Avicenna and Descartes
     on the Cogito and the Flying
     Man"
April 19: "Avicenna and Leibniz on
     What is Possible and What is
     Best"

4 pm, Gilman 208

Lucy Nusseibeh

The Humanities Center &
the Center for Advanced
Media Studies welcomed
Lucy Nusseibeh

     "Grappling with the
     Future: The Need to
     Demilitarize our Minds"

April 12, 4 pm, Gilman 208

Walter Benn Michaels

   The graduate students of the
   Humanities Center welcomed
   Walter Benn Michaels,
   University of Illinois at Chicago

    April 5, 4 pm, Lecture
     "Formal Feelings: Political Economy
     and Aesthetic Autonomy"
    April 6, 10 am, Seminar
     "The Beauty of a Social Problem"
   Gilman 208

Willemien Otten

   The Humanities Center
   welcomed Willemien Otten,
   Professor of Theology and the
   History of Christianity, Divinity
   School, University of Chicago

       "Eriugena and Emerson on
       Nature and the Self"

   April 3, 4 pm, Gilman 208

Regina Schwartz

   The graduate students of the
   Humanities Center welcomed
   Prof. Regina Schwartz of
   Northwestern University
   for a lecture and a seminar:
      March 27, 4 pm, Lecture
         "Thinking about Contracts:
         The Merchant of Venice"
      March 28, 10 am, Seminar
         "Biblical Justice"
      Gilman 208

Michael V. Marder

    University of the Basque Country Vitoria-Gasteiz
   "The Project of Critical Phenomenology"
    March 7, 2012, 5-7 pm, Gilman 388

Adorno Today

    The Humanities Center hosted
    the Inaugural Meeting of the
    Association for Adorno Studies

    March 2-3, 2012

    You can find a full schedule here;
    for more information, please consult
    the Association's website.

Joshua Landy

    Associate Professor of French at
    Stanford University

          February 13, 4 PM, Lecture:
         "Formative Fictions: Imaginative
              Literature and the Training of
              the Capacities"

          February 14, 1:30 PM, Seminar:
             "La Recherche du Temps Perdu:
              Why a Novel?"

Fall 2011

Ruth HaCohen

    Artur Rubinstein Chair in Musicology at
    The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

    "Dissonances in the Synagogue: The
       Theological Subconscious of Modern Music"

November 16, 4:00 PM, Gilman 208

Robert Pippin

    Associate of the Humanities Center and Evelyn Stefansson
    Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought,
    Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago

   "After the Beautiful: Hegel and Pictorial Modernism" (Continued)

      November 8, 4:00 PM, Gilman 208
                              Lecture: "Politics and Ontology in Modern Art:
                              Clark, Fried and Left-Hegelianism"
      November 9, 8:00 PM, Gilman 208
                              Lecture: "Philosophy and Art:
                              Heidegger on Modernist Art"
      November 10, 4:00 PM, Gilman 130D
                              Workshop on "Active and Passive Skepticism
                              in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place:
                              Some Themes from Cavell"

Spring 2011

Martine de Gaudemar

    Professor of Philosophy at the
    Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre-
    La Défense
       "Individuation and Personalization:
        Leibniz's Philosophy of Virtual
        Agencies"
April 13, 2011, 5:00 PM, Gilman 208

Philosophy and New American TV Series

In his groundbreaking book on classic Hollywood comedies, the?Pursuit of Happiness, Stanley Cavell explores the philosophical significance of popular movies and emphasizes their relation with, and importance for, a certain idea of American democracy as initially outlined by Emerson and Thoreau. The emergence in last two decades of a new genre of popular American TV series (mainly but not exclusively produced by HBO), highly innovative both in visual and dramatic terms, calls for similar analyses of their philosophical and political underpinnings in the context of a different cultural and social landscape largely shaped by cable TV and the Internet. Finally, the impressive international success of American TV series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Mad Men or True Blood is an interesting case of the larger problem of the relation between the local and the global and may offer a new perspective on what is stake, philosophically and politically, when the most singular proves to be the only access to true universality as Gilles Deleuze claims in Difference and Repetition.

Speakers:
Hédi Kaddour (Poet and Novelist)
Sandra Laugier (University of Paris 1--Sorbonne)
    Paola Marrati (Humanities Center)
    Yi-Ping Ong (Humanities Center)
    Martin Shuster (Hamilton College)
    Jeroen Gerrits (Humanities Center)

   April 15, 9:30 AM-6:30 PM, Gilman 208

Jocelyn Benoist

   Professor of Theory of Knowledge and
   Contemporary Philosophy, University
   of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne
       "From One and Another's
       Point of View"
   April 20, 2011, 4:00 PM, Gilman 208

Sarah Beckwith

   Professor of English, Duke University
      10 AM, Seminar on Shakespeare,
         Arendt, and Austin
      4 PM, Lecture:"Shakespeare,
   Tragedy, and The Names of
       Action"
    April 21, Gilman 208

Stanley Cavell Symposium

The Humanities Center was proud to host a symposium celebrating the publication of "Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory" and its author, Stanley Cavell, on Friday, April 22, 2011.

With the participation of Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Veena Das, Byron Davies, Michael Fried, Sandra Laugier, Paola Marrati, Yi-Ping Ong, Hent de Vries, and Michael Williams.

Robert Pippin

Associate of the Humanities Center and Evelyn Stefansson
Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago

Fatalism in American Film Noir:
Some Cinematic Philosophy II

    Lecture: "Sexual Agency in Fritz Lang's
          Scarlet Street"
Seminar Discussion on Robert Aldrich's
          Kiss Me Deadly

Philosophy by Other Means I

    Lecture: "After the Beautiful: Hegel
and the Philosophy of Visual
          Modernism"

April 26, 27, and 28, 4:00 PM
    Gilman 208

Fall 2010

Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

       "Translating Simone de Beauvoir: The Philosophical,
     Political and Historical Significance of The Second Sex"
    September 8, 5:15 PM, Gilman 208

Humanities Center Fall Reception

September 11, 5-7:00 PM, chez Macksey

New Faculty Welcome Reception

September 16, 4-6:00 PM, Hodson 110

Celebrating the Humanities at Hopkins

September 17, 2-5:30 PM, Gilman 50

Stanley Fish
Florida International University
How to Write a Sentence?

Elizabeth Cropper
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery
of Art
A Sense of Place: Florence, Bronzino, and Baltimore?

David E. Wellbery
Department of Comparative Literature, The University of
Chicago
Kafka's Wish?

Eric Santner

Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago
"Modernism and the Vital Sphere: Rainer Maria Rilke's
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge"
September 30, 5:00 PM, Gilman 208

Meredith Williams

Department of Philosophy
"The Builders"
October 13, 4:00 PM, Gilman 208

Chantal Bax

Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam
Wittgenstein and/as Philosophy?
October 21, 4:00 PM, Gilman 208

Futures Seminar

October 28, Mason Hall, 4:00 PM
October 29, Charles Commons, Room 304 and the Barber Conference Room, 9:00 AM

Alessia Ricciardi (French and Italian,
    Comparative Literature, Northwestern)
"Becoming Woman, Becoming
        Imperceptible in Antonioni's Films"

Daniel Morgan (Film Studies,
    Pittsburgh)
"Max Ophuls and the Limits of
         Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and
        Ethics of Camera Movement"

Bernard J. Rhie (English, Williams College)
"Wittgenstein and the
        Philosophy of the Face"

Johns Hopkins University

Humanities Center