The online home for the Humanities Forum at The University of Scranton through the Gail and Francis Slattery Center for Humanities

Tag: Lectures

Jennifer Frey, Iris Murdoch and Flannery O’Connor on Vision, Transcendence, and Morality, March 12

On March 12, University of South Carolina professor Jennifer Frey will deliver a talk entitled “Iris Murdoch and Flannery O’Connor on Vision, Transcendence, and Morality” at 5:30pm in the Heritage Room, 5th floor of Weinberg Memorial Library.

Dr. Frey is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, working at the intersection of the philosophy of action and ethics. She was recently a PI of a three year, 2.1 million dollar research project titled, “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning of Life.” She is the author of many articles and recently co-edited a book titled, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. She runs a popular philosophy podcast, “Sacred and Profane Love.”

Jonathan W. Gray, “Living at the End of History: HBO’s Watchmen and African American Citizenship,” 2/24

On Monday, February 24, Jonathan Gray will give a talk entitled “Living at the End of History: HBO’s Watchmen and African American Citizenship” at 5:30pm in Pearn Auditorium (BRN 228).

The Watchmen has been a cultural touchstone ever since its release. In his talk, Gray will explore how the recent critically-acclaimed HBO series explores notions of race and citizenship.

Jonathan W. Gray is Associate Professor English at the CUNY Graduate Center & John Jay College, CUNY. He is the author of Civil Rights in the White Literary Imagination (Mississippi) and is currently working on Illustrating the Race (Columbia), an investigation of Black representation in comics published since 1966. Prof. Gray co-edited the essay collection Disability in Comics and Graphic Novels for Palgrave McMillian and contributed the chapter on Race to the forthcoming Keywords in Comics Studies (NYU). He is a founding member of the MLA Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives and founded the Journal of Comics and Culture (Pace).

John Fletcher, “Real Trouble: Performing Irony and Identity in a Deepfake World,” 2/19

On Wednesday, February 19 at 5:30pm in Pearn Auditorum (BRN 228), Dr. John Fletcher will kick off the Spring 2020 Humanities Forum with his talk “Real Trouble: Performing Irony and Identity in a Deepfake World.”

Deepfakes have become a part of our contemporary lives. These algorithmically-generated manipulations of images and videos have been profiled by Reset, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and recently in The Atlantic as ways that disinformation and misinformation proliferates online.

John Fletcher is the Billy J. Harbin Associate Professor of Theatre at Louisiana State University. He studies social change performance, evangelical Christianity, and online disinformation/misinformation. His work appears in journals such as Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Theatre Survey, Text and Performance Quarterly, and Performance Matters as well as in anthologies such as Theatre, Performance, and Change (Palgrave 2018), Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (Palgrave 2017), and Theatre Historiography: Critical Interventions (Michigan 2010). His monograph Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age was published in 2013 by Michigan. He serves as the co-editor of Theatre Topics. Current research projects involve investigating the endpoints of activist performance and theorizing irony/mendacity in online performance.

We hope you will join us for Dr. Fletcher’s talk.

Fred Beiser, “Schopenhauer’s Legacy,” 11/20

On Wednesday, November 20 at 5:30pm in the Heritage Room (WML 5th floor), Fred Beiser will give a talk entitled “Schopenhauer’s Legacy” as a part of the 2019-2020 Humanities Forum. Professor Beiser has been a major contributor to work on the history of modern philosophy, especially the history of German philosophy (Kant and German idealism) and the English Enlightenment. His book The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte won the 1987 Thomas J. Wilson Prize for the Best First Book. Students in Phi Sigma Tau, the Philosophy honors society, have been reading his recent book, Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. 
As a part of the Slattery Center for Humanities, the Humanities Forum seeks to bring engaging speakers and artists to campus to enrich our campus climate; engage in public lectures and discussions; and interact with students, faculty, staff, and the Scranton community.
We hope you join us for this, our last event of the Fall, and what should be an exciting presentation.