IATH NEWS
Irrationality & the Contemporary Symposium on May 4
April 27, 2018
The Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures is hosting a one-day symposium on "Irrationality & the Contemporary" on Friday, May 4 in Wilson Hall 142. Speakers will consider how trends in media, governance, aesthetics, and academia are affecting societal belief in observable fact and well-informed dialogue. Professor Wendy Chun (Modern Culture and Media, Brown University) will deliver the keynote lecture.
Panelists will discuss the ongoing climate of skepticism, amid other signs of the retreat of liberalism around the world, and will consider the play between rationality and irrationality in the post-1945 period, particularly in public discourse. Scholars from diverse disciplines will reflect on forms of irrationality in politics, new media, the university, and neo-liberal institutions, and will try to illuminate conditions constitutive of the contemporary moment, as well as historical forces that may be contributing to the incremental dissolution of infrastructures that support liberal democracy.
The symposium is sponsored by the Buckner W. Clay Endowment, the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, the New Literary History, UVA's Department of Politics and Department of English, and the Food, Fuels, and Forests Working Group.
The event will be begin at 9am. The current list of participants is:
- Wendy Chun, Modern Culture and Media, Brown
- Jonathan Flatley, English, Wayne State
- Deborah Lawrence, Environmental Science, University of Virginia
- Jennifer Fleissner, English, Indiana University
- Bradley Pasenak, English, University of Virginia
- Elizabeth Losh, English and American Studies, William & Mary
- Lisa Friedman, Reporter, The New York Times
- Austin Hetrick, English (PhD Candidate, event organizer), University of Virginia
- Jap-Nanak Makkar, English (PhD Candidate, event organizer), University of Virginia
