Literature and Philosophy Workshop

All meetings held on Thursdays at 4:30pm in Foster 305 unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, September 30, 2010 – Reading M.M. Bakhtin’s “Epic and Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study of the Novel” and Friedrich Schlegel’s “Letter About the Novel.”

Friday, October 15, 2010 – Seminar with Lydia Goehr, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University; Discussion of “For the Birds/Against the Birds: Modernist Narratives of the End of Art” from Professor Goehr’s Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory.  **Meeting 10 am – 12 pm in Foster 505.**

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - James McCormick, PhD Candidate in Committee on Social Thought and Germanic Studies, on “Robert Musil: Narrative, Subjectivity, Ethics”

(Download the paper here.)

Thursday, November 11, 2010 - Reading Plato’s Republic (specific focus on the discussion of poets, especially books II.376c – III.403c and X.595a-608a)

TUESDAY, November 23, 2010 - Gabriel Richardson Lear, Professor of Philosophy and Social Thought at the University of Chicago, on Plato’s aesthetics.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO A NEW DATE (Tuesday the 23rd).  It will still take place at 4:30pm in Foster 305.

Thursday, December 2, 2010 - Monica Olaru, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, on “Das Urprosaische: Events, Facts and Norms in Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest.”

All meetings on Wednesday at 5pm in Foster 305 (unless otherwise noted)

April 7, 2010 – (Reading) Martha Nussbaum, “Introduction: Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature,” in Love’s Knowledge


April 22, 2010 – Lisa Barca on ” ‘A Grace of Sense’: Temporality and the Poetics of Transcendence in Eugenio Montale, Rainer Maria Rilke, and T. S. Eliot”


May 5, 2010 – (Reading) Paul Ricoeur, “Life in Quest of Narrative,” and Arthur Danto, “Narration and Knowledge”

THURSDAY, May 13, 2010 – “Literature and Philosophy: A Methodological Inquiry,” a faculty round-table discussion with Professors Glenn Most, Thomas Pavel, Robert Pippin, and David Wellbery (5pm in SS 302).  Wine and cheese reception to follow.


THURSDAY, May 27, 2010 – Kasia Bartoszynska, “Utopian Ironies: Readings in Swift and Krasicki”


June 2, 2010 – Lauren Butler Bergier, “The Dramatic Unities in Paul Claudel’s Satin Slipper”