Date and Time: 5:30-7PM, Thursday February 6
Venue: AB2107
Featured Speaker: Professor Geoffrey Harpham, Visiting Fellow, Kenan Institute, Duke University
Topic: Freedom and the Character of Scholarship
Light refreshments will be provided & opportunities for student researchers will be announced
The Freedom Lab is an interdisciplinary humanities lab for the study of freedom and unfreedom in the modern world. The lab will offer students opportunities for independent research, and bring diverse scholars from across the world to speak on the important issue of freedom. This opening reception will introduce the subject of the lab, the student research opportunities, and conclude with a keynote lecture.
Keynote Title:
Freedom and the Character of Scholarship
Abstract:
What is a scholar? Although the subject is rarely addressed directly, the act of scholarship requires a certain kind of human character, a certain kind of personality, with particular forms of empowerment and restriction. My primary example will be the great African-American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois ((1868-1963), who set out very deliberately to learn how to be a scholar when he studied at Harvard and the University of Berlin.
Bio of Keynote Speaker:
Geoffrey Harpham is a visiting fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, and former director of the National Humanities Center. He is author of numerous books and articles, including The Humanities and the Dream of America, Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity, and The Character of Criticism.
