Papers to be read in advance will be circulated via listserv one week prior to the meeting.

Thursday, January 10: Jonathan Baskin, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought, “Untrendy Problems: Pale King’s Philosophical Inspirations” (treating David Foster Wallace)

Thursday, January 24: Birte Loschenkohl, Collegiate Assistant Professor, Social Sciences, “How to do things as a dilettante: hesitation, failure, and aesthetic repetition in Kierkegaard”

Thursday, February 7: Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Literature, Comparative Literature, the Committee on Social Thought, Fundamentals, and Creative Writing, “Shiny Stars, Silent Calls”

Thursday, February 21: Dhananjay Jagannathan, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, “On Making Sense of Oneself: Reflections on Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending”

Thursday, February 28, in Foster 505: Berel Lang, formerly of Wesleyan University, author of Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (1990), The Anatomy of Philosophical Style (1990), Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics (2000), Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence(University Press of 2009), and other books, “Primo Levi as Philosopher”

Workshop to precede a documentary screening and discussion of Cinecittà Refugee Camp (for Italian Jews) with Italian director Marco Bertozzi and Noa Steimatsky (University of Chicago, Cinema and Media Studies), 7pm at the Logan Center for Performing Arts. Cosponsored with the Center for Jewish Studies.

Thursday, March 7: Close Reading, “How to Read Nietzsche: A literary-philosophical commentary on Beyond Good and Evil 296″ led by Christian Benne, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Syddansk Universitet, Odense.

All meetings take place Thursday at 4:30pm in Foster 305 unless otherwise noted.

Papers to be read in advance will be circulated via listserv one week prior to the meeting.

Thursday, October 4: Introductory Meeting

Readings: Stanley Cavell’s essay, “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy,” and Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Of Modern Poetry”

Thursday, October 18: Hannah Mosher, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought

“Seduction, Unhappy Love, and Aesthetic Inwardness in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or”

Thursday, November 1: Mark Hopwood, PhD Candidate in the Philosophy Department

“‘Only Connect: Moral Vision, Skepticism, and Embodiment in Howard’s End”

Thursday, November 15: Philip Sugg, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought

“Religion’s Long Nineteenth Century: Representations of an Increasingly Secularized Modernity in Select German and British Literary Traditions”

Thursday, November 29: Lauren Silvers, Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Humanities

“From Character to Personality: George Eliot’s Experimental Self-Writing in Impressions of Theophrastus Such”

Thursday, December 6: Richard Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English

“The Struggle Against Symbolism: Successes and Failures in Stanley Cavell’s Readings of Shakespeare” (Co-hosted with the Renaissance Workshop)

Dear Literature and Philosophy Enthusiasts,

We’re honored to be following founders Agnes Malinowska and Michael Subialka in serving you as the Literature and Philosophy Workshop Coordinators.

As you know, the workshop exists primarily to promote the interests and aims of University of Chicago graduate students, but benefits greatly from the ongoing involvement of distinguished scholars, thinkers, and writers from within the University and without. If you would like to present an essay, paper, research question, or chapter (at any level of completion) in the coming year please let us know as soon as possible. We are especially eager to fill out our Winter and Spring programs tentatively scheduled for the following Thursdays from 4:30-6:00:

Winter

January 10 (Week 1)

January 24 (Week 3)

February 7 (Week 5)

February 21 (Week 7)

March 7 (Week 9)

Spring

April 4 (Week 1)

April 18 (Week 3)

May 2 (Week 5)

May 9 (Week 6)

May 23 (Week 8)

June 6 (Week 10)

Please feel free to forward this post to any potential participants and/or presenters. Finally, all interested parties are encouraged to join our mailing list to receive information about upcoming meetings and reading materials.

Looking forward to seeing you this Autumn,

Carly Lane and Robert Abbott

carlylane@uchicago.edu

rcabbott@uchicago.edu

March 29^th – Hannah Mosher, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought, “What’s So Ethical About Inwardness?: The Many Forms of Inwardness of Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authors”

MONDAY, April 9^th – Alan Levinovitz, PhD Candidate in Religion and Literature, “The Zhuangzi and Contemplative Practice,” at 4:30pm in Foster 505

TUESDAY, April 24^th – Lumen Christi Institute Lecture by Ian Ker, University of Oxford, on “G.K. Chesterton and the Philosophy of Wonder,” 7pm in Ida Noyes Third Floor Theater

April 26^th – Paul Kottman, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, The New School, on “Romantic Love as the Struggle for Freedom”

May 10^th – Joshua Landy, Associate Professor of French, Stanford University, on “Formative Fictions: Imaginative Literature and the Training of the Capacities”

WEDNESDAY, May 30^th at 4:30pm in Foster 505 – Alexander Orwin, PhD Candidate in Social Thought, “From Speechlessness to Philosophy: The Role of the Ummah in Farabi’s Thought” – please note the unusual time and location!

January 12^th – Robert Abbott, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought and Germanic Studies, “To Weep and Know Why: Rilke’s Duino Elegies and the Custom of Burial”

January 26^th – Reading, Italo Calvino: “Philosophy and Literature” and “The Burning of the Abominable House”

February 9^th – Tamar Abramov, Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Humanities, on Conrad’s “Secret Agent.”

Tuesday, February 21^st– DOC films screening of Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place. (Note, this is not a workshop-sponsored event, but it is a nicely-timed way to see the film right before Professor Pippin’s discussion of it on Thursday)

February 23^rd IN STUART 102– Robert Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy, “Active and Passive Skepticism in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place” (please note that this meeting will take place in Stuart 102, not in the usual location; it will still take place at 4:30pm)

March 1^st– Gerbert-Sylvestre Bouyssou, Université de Tours, “From Glory to Public Opinion, ‘reputation’ (doxa, δόξα) in Greek Antiquity”

March 8^th – Mike Thomas, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought, “Whitehead, Borges, and the Fictional Nature of Concepts”

Friday, September 30^th at 1pm in Rosenwald 405 – Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138. Lunch provided.

• Joint session with Poetry and Poetics Workshop and Renaissance Workshop. Co-sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW).
• Optional secondary reading: Edward A. Snow, “Loves of Comfort and Despair: A Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138,” ELH 47 (1980): 462-483.

October 20^th – James McCormick, PhD Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought and Germanic Studies, on “Mind, Body and Form in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities.” Reception to follow.

Tuesday, November 1^st – Monica Olaru, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, on “Will: A Literary Critique before the Introduction of Schopenhauer into France.” Reception to follow.

November 17^th – Joseph Ballan, PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Religions, on “Thomas Browne, W.G. Sebald, and the Natural History of Religion.” Reception to follow.

December 1^st – Daniel Pratt, PhD Candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures, on “Gombrowicz’s Gombrowicz: The Self among.” Reception to follow.

The reading group will meet informally every couple of weeks, and readings will be determined by the interest of those who want to participate.

Thanks to everyone for a great year!

Thursday, April 14 – Agnes Malinowska, PhD Candidate in Social Thought, on “The Activity of Consciousness: Pragmatism and American Literature in the Age of Evolution”

Thursday, April 28 in Foster 505 – James Conant, Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, on “Nietzsche’s Perfectionism: A Reading of Schopenhauer as Educator”

(Please note that the discussion with Professor Conant will be in Foster 505, not the usual room)

Thursday, May 5 – Jason Mohaghegh, Assistant Professor of World Literature, New Jersey City University, author of New Literature and Philosophy in the Middle East: The Chaotic Imagination, on “Inflictions: The Writing of Violence, East/West” (joint meeting with MEHAT)

Friday, May 6 at 4:00 – Jason Mohaghegh at MEHAT workshop (joint workshop meeting with Lit/Phil)

Thursday, May 12 – Dana Freibach-Heifetz, Associate Member of the Department of Philosophy, on “Giving Sense to Generosity-Ethics: A Philosophical Reading of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot”

Thursday, May 26 – John Paul Rollert, PhD Candidate in Social Thought, on “The Great Gatsby and the Insensible Imagination”

Thursday, June 2 - Michael Subialka, PhD Candidate in Social Thought and Romance Languages and Literatures, on “Grotesque Aesthetics: Pirandello, the Romantics, and the Distorted Shape of Humor.”

Thursday, January 13, 2011 – Reading from Rilke (selections from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge).

Thursday, January 27,  2011 in Foster 505– Eric Santner, Philip and Ida Romburg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies and in the Committee on Jewish Studies, on “Modernism and the Vital Sphere: Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.”

Please note that the meeting with Professor Santner will take place in Foster 505.

Thursday, February 10, 2011 - Alan Dagovitz, PhD Candidate in Religion and Literature, on “The Concept of Toy.”

FRIDAY, February 25, 2011 at 2:00pm - Haitham Ibrahim, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, on “Action, Communication, Event: George Herbert Meade’s Aesthetics of Process.”

Please note that this meeting is being held on Friday at 2:00pm.  We will still meet in Foster 305 to discuss Haitham’s work.

Please note, there will NOT be a meeting 10th week (as had been originally planned).