Session 1

Carlo Lorenzini, pen name Collodi, never could have imagined the longevity of his mischievous wooden puppet, Pinocchio. Published serially in a magazine for children, the nineteenth-century Tuscan tale was and remains one of the world's most enduring and beloved stories, having been translated into dozens of languages, made into numerous live and animated films, served as inspiration to many "serious" modern writers, and provided an immediately recognizable image of mendacity in the form of a nose with a mind of its own!

We judge people for how they feel, and not just for what they do.

The presentation will examine various kinds of prose narratives—Ancient Greek romances, chivalric stories, pastorals, comic and picaresque novels—showing how their rivalry led to the formation of the modern novel in the eighteenth century.

The Industrial Revolution and the global transfer of new printing technologies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries led to a boom in printing in colonial India. Probably more books were lithographed in the subcontinent than in Europe at the time. This talk will explore the early history of print in north India from the perspective of materiality and technology.

Plato’s conception of scientific explanation is most often viewed through the lens of Aristotle’s writings. On this view, Plato’s conception centers on what has been called his ‘theory of ideas’, a grand but somewhat mystical and toothless conception, which Aristotle rightly displaced with his doctrine that knowledge of the general arises by abstraction from perception of the particulars. I will suggest that Plato’s idea was neither quite so grand, nor at all mystical, and certainly not toothless. It was the idea that exact science proceeds by idealizing the phenomena it is to investigate.

Composer Howard Sandroff discusses the psychological and structural imagery, which drives his unique method of conjuring up and manipulating musical ideas. That same “obsessive image” is manifest and informs the steel scupture he began building in the early 2000’s. These works bear an uncanny aesthetic consistency with his compositions in that they are characterized by objects of extreme economy of material and complexity, which are not born of evolutionary development but by his interest in arresting time and space.

The phenomenon of suicide attack, as most prominently observed in the strategy of contemporary terrorist organizations, has been investigated by a wide variety of academic disciplines ranging from anthropology and psychology to religious studies and political science. Whereas it appears to be tempting to relate it to culture or religion, scholars have described and explained the phenomenon in many different terms and ways. What is noticeable about the research undertaken so far, however, is that its focus has by and large remained on real and hard facts.

The artist Maude Phelps McVeigh Hutchins arrived at the University of Chicago in fall 1929 following her husband’s election as the University’s President. She continued her work as a sculptor, painter, poet, and playwright throughout the next twenty years of her career in Chicago, despite the social constraints of her official status.

On August 14, 2007, Denmark apologized for her part in the ninth-century invasions of Ireland. As far as we know, she has not yet apologized to England. This talk will track the Vikings' impact on medieval England, an impact whose effects are still evident today.

Creative Writing faculty member Leila Wilson is a poet and graduate of the MAPH, and the former poetry editor of the Chicago Review. She will be reading from her book The Hundred Grasses (Milkweed Editions, 2013). Her poems have appeared in A Public Space, Denver Quarterly, Poetry, The Canary, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation and an Academy of American Poets College Prize. She received an MFA from Indiana University.