Month: May 2015

The Inaugural Caribbean Philosophical Association Summer School at UCONN presents and invites you to join us for . . .

Three Public Lectures

 

6/1: 9:30 a.m., Class of 1947 Room “What the Jaguar Saw: Why Only Amerindians Can Save our Modern Soul,”

by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Birkbeck College, University of London

6/2: 2p.m., Oak Hall 408 “The Roots of Africana Political Philosophy,” by Paget Henry, Brown University

6/4: 2p.m., Class of 1947 Room “The Vertical Revolution and Political Spirituality,” by Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

The Public Discourse Project is the recipient of a $1 million grant (UConn’s Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

UConn Invests $10 Million in Support of Academic Vision

A new institute for brain and cognitive science and a humanities project exploring the barriers to meaningful public discourse are just two of the faculty-led initiatives the University of Connecticut is supporting through the allocation of nearly $10 million in grants.The three-year grants represent the first set of targeted school investments directly related to UConn’s new Academic Vision, which pursues excellence in five fundamental areas: undergraduate education, graduate study, teaching, engagement, and research.

The Public Discourse Project, also the recipient of a $1 million grant, will be overseen by UConn’s Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Through the project, UConn faculty in the arts and humanities will explore ways to achieve meaningful public discourse in an increasingly divisive culture. Those involved with the project will look at the historical and sociological barriers that stymie productive social dialogue and, alternatively, the conditions that foster it. With anticipated additional funding from the John Templeton Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project is designed to establish UConn as an international leader in public and digital humanities research.

“The project aims not only to understand the sources of our cultural division, but to do something about it: to combine academic research and community engagement toward the goal of raising the level of discussion in the hope of strengthening democracy,” says philosophy professor Michael Lynch, director of the Humanities Institute.

read more

 

Lessons in Resistance: Richard Wright as Social Critic and Political Thinker

 

MONDAY, MAY 11th

LOCATION: KATHARINE SEYMOUR DAY HOUSE

 

1:00 P.M. Meeting Opening: ENGAGING RICHARD WRIGHT AS A POLITICAL THINKER,

Ernie Zirakzadeh, Political Science, UCONN and Jane Gordon, Political Science & Africana Studies, UCONN

 

1:30 P.M. Panel I: BLACK SUBJECTIVITY

James Haile, Philosophy, Dickinson College,

111A Cryptic Tongue’: Richard Wright’s Phenomenological Sociology”

Lewis Gordon, Philosophy & Africana Studies, UCONN

“Richard Wright’s Black Consciousness, Steve Biko’s Politics”

 

 

3:15P.M. Panel II: RADICAL POLITICS

George Ciccariello-Maher, Politics and History, Drexel University,“Bigger’s Being, Wright’s Lumpen”

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Philosophy, Lewis University,

“Conceiving a New Politics: Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, and the Future of Critical Theory”

Dorothy Stringer, English,Temple University,

“Psychology and Black Liberation in Richard Wright’s Black Power (1954)”

 

 

TUESDAY, MAY 12th

LOCATION: MARK TWAIN CENTER

9:30 A.M. Panel Ill: ENGENDERED VIOLENCE

Floyd Hayes, Political Science & Africana Studies,Johns Hopkins University, “Womanizing Richard Wright: Constructing the Black Feminine in The Outsider” Tommy Curry, Philosophy and Africana Studies,Texas A&M University,

“Man of Work:The Rape and Execution of Willie McGee”

 

 

11:00 A.M. Panel IV: RHETORICAL REGISTERS

William Dow,Comparative Literature & English, American University of Paris,

“Richard Wright’s Literary Journalism: Reprimanding Race, Resisting Modernism”

Ernie Zirakzadeh, Political Science, UCONN,

“Modernist Culture and American Fascism: Bigger as Harbinger of White Politics”

Stephen Marshall, American Studies & African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas, Austin,

“The Prophetic Wright”

 

 

2:15 P.M. Panel V: UNCLE TOM’S GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN

Jane Gordon, Political Science & Africana Studies, UCONN,“Slavery, Continued: Uncle Tom’s Grandchildren”

Laura Grattan, Political Science,Wellesley College,

“The Refusal to Compromise with Reality: Wright and Prison Abolitionism”

 

Generously sponsorsed by the UCONN HUMANITIES INSTITUTE Questions? email jane.gordon@uconn.edu