Humanities Day 2021 - Session 2

Hannah Arendt and the Humanities (Virtual Session)

christinev — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 16:29:26 +0000

Presenter:

In-Person & Virtual

In-person and live streamed: In recent decades, the value of a humanist education has been criticized from all sides with doubts cast upon its relevance in an increasingly precarious world. The presenter defends a philosophical education in the humanities not in terms of canons, methods, or disciplines to be mastered, nor even knowledges and skills to be acquired and transferred. But rather, the humanities are something deeper and more fundamental—the continuous forging of a revisable moral life guided by reason in open and contingent intersubjective conversations with others. In other words, the humanities in its deepest sense conceived as a lifelong education in judgment. Teaching in the humanities has no more important goal.

Hannah Arendt and the Humanities

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:59:47 +0000

Presenter:

David Rodowick

Session 2

In-Person & Virtual

In-person and live streamed: In recent decades, the value of a humanist education has been criticized from all sides with doubts cast upon its relevance in an increasingly precarious world. The presenter defends a philosophical education in the humanities not in terms of canons, methods, or disciplines to be mastered, nor even knowledges and skills to be acquired and transferred. But rather, the humanities are something deeper and more fundamental—the continuous forging of a revisable moral life guided by reason in open and contingent intersubjective conversations with others. In other words, the humanities in its deepest sense conceived as a lifelong education in judgment. Teaching in the humanities has no more important goal.

**The in-person presentation is sold out.**

Climate Change in Antiquity: the Human(ist) Perspective

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:58:30 +0000

Presenter:

Catherine Kearns

Hervé Reculeau

Session 2

In-Person

We often talk about climate change in the past through overly scientific lenses: for example, proxies of cooling or warming weather, fluctuations in species, or records of resource stress. These science-heavy conversations also lean toward identifying or explaining societal catastrophes through the direct influence of climate change on ancient societies. How can we better understand the complex ways that cultures and states navigate climatic variability at multiple scales? This session presents a different approach to examining the social, political, and cultural dimensions of human-environment relationships in the past, drawing on the strengths of humanistic disciplines like history, philology, archaeology, anthropology, and visual studies, to give back to ancient human beings and groups the place they deserve in the narrative.

**This presentation only has a few seats left.**

Tracing the Sob: The Last Castrato, Verismo Opera, and Early Phonography

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:56:41 +0000

Presenter:

Martha Feldman

Session 2

In-Person

In 1902–1904, when phonography was in its infancy, the voice of the last castrato Alessandro Moreschi was recorded to preserve a vanishing performance tradition. How might an archaeology that goes beyond those recordings uncover more sonic remains than meet the ear? How might it give purchase on Moreschi’s idiosyncratic and bewildering vocal habits as acoustic shards of past practices that surface in the form of what Derrida called a trace—above all laryngeal catches in the throat manifested as unpitched phonations, aspirates, large upward scoops, and even sobs? This session approaches those questions through comparative listening to early recordings by other singers as well as through several forking and interrelated traditions, including castrato and bel canto singing, theories of ornamentation, and vocal pedagogies.

**This presentation is sold out.**

Flaws and Admiration

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:54:30 +0000

Presenter:

Benjamin Callard

Session 2

In-Person

In recent years, buildings and streets have been re-named, statues destroyed or moved on the grounds that the recipients of these honors behaved immorally. This is the public or expressive counterpart of a more inward question: how should we think and feel about people in the light of their vices and virtues? Is it possible to (justly) admire someone (for her achievements) if she also did terrible things? What is it to admire someone for an achievement? Are we admiring the person or the action? Can we—should we be psychologically able to—keep our attitudes toward a person's flaws and accomplishments discrete? In this talk, the presenter will offer some materials for answering these questions.

Times and Transformation: Reading, Writing, and Teaching in a Pandemic Era

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:53:42 +0000

Presenter:

Lina Ferreria Cabeza-Vanegas

Rachel DeWoskin

Vu Tran

Session 2

In-Person

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, how does an artist catch the day and conceive of keeping to a schedule and building a scaffolding for writing? This panel is a conversation between three authors on broken scaffolding, and a report on and exploration of diverse methods of reading, writing, and teaching outside of a schedule while negotiating global imbalance. How does a pandemic reform our notions of time? The pages we read and write? And the classes we teach? Perhaps, “the task of art today” is as James Baldwin acknowledges: “A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.”

Democratic Failure in Greece and Rome

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:50:04 +0000

Presenter:

Clifford Ando

Session 2

In-Person

Classical Athens and Rome sustained two of the longest-lived democracies in history. By their reckoning, each lasted at least 500 years. Yet each also ended, and the stories of their endings has much to say to another age when democratic institutions, and democratic cultures, feel imperiled. This session will describe the circumstances that led to the ends of democracy in Athens and Rome. Particular attention will be given to the role of legislatures and law, which they imagined as a bulwark of democratic rule but which appear also to have been instrumental in its failure.

**This presentation is full.**

C. Riley Snorton

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 19:32:32 +0000

Presentation:

The Wild Man in the Green Swamp and Other Stories about Race in America (Virtual Session)

Session:

Session 2

English Language and Literature

C. Riley Snorton is a cultural theorist who focuses on racial, sexual, and transgender histories and cultural productions. He is the co-editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies and the author, editor, or co-editor of several volumes, including Saturation: Race, Art and the Circulation of Value (Cambridge: MIT Press/New Museum, 2020), Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). Snorton is the Interim Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature with a joint appointment in the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Chicago.

David Rodowick

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 19:28:51 +0000

Presentation:

Hannah Arendt and the Humanities

Session:

Session 2

Cinema and Media Studies

David Rodowick is a specialist in philosophical aesthetics and the criticism and theory of contemporary art and cinema. His most recent books make the case for a philosophy of humanities whose modes of knowledge differ from that of the sciences. Rodowick is the author of nine books, including What Philosophy Wants from Images (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Philosophy’s Artful Conversation (Harvard University Press, 2014), and Elegy for Theory (Harvard University Press, 2014). His most recent book is An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Rodowick is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College at the University of Chicago.

Hervé Reculeau

jsjoyce — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 19:25:59 +0000

Presentation:

Climate Change in Antiquity: the Human(ist) Perspective

Session:

Session 2

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Hervé Reculeau is a historian of Syria and Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE. His research centers on the interaction between humans and their environment, irrigation practices and devices, and agricultural works and techniques. He is the Principal Investigator for the Humanities Without Walls sponsored project Coping with Changing Climates in Early Antiquity (Chicago-Michigan-Purdue). His publications relevant to the current topic are Climate, Environment and Agriculture in Assyria in the 2nd Half of the 2nd Millennium BCE (Harrassowitz, 2011) and Florilegium marianum XVI. L’agriculture irriguée au royaume de Mari: essai d’histoire des techniques (SEPOA, 2018). Reculeau is Associate Professor in the Oriental Institute, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago.