Barker-Benfield, G. J.
History, SUNY Albany
October 21, 1994
Sensibility in America: An
Eighteenth-Century or Nineteenth-Century Phenomenon?
Barker-Benfield extends his recent study of sensibility in
eighteenth-century metropolitan Britain to its mainland American
colonies and to their transformation to the United States. His paper
will emphasize similarity and difference, addressing cultures of women
and men adapting British ideology to commerce, consumerism, revolution,
and nationalism.
Bender, John
English, Stanford University
February 13, 1998
Science and Pornography
In his illustrated lecture, Professor Bender discussed the relationship
between the new forms of analytical representation of the human body
that evolved in eighteenth-century medicine and the concurrent
emergence of a new "techno-pornography." In order to understand and
present itself as "science," the new medicine needed to deny the erotic
and the esthetic dimensions of its evolving techniques of dissection.
This process included the reflexive shaping of the world of modern
pornography as the putatively unscientific devil twin of scientific
medicine.
Campbell, Glen
French, Italian and Spanish, University of Calgary
November 2, 2004
Lesage and Turcaret
Money is the
main character in Alain-René Lesage's five-act comedy of manners Turcaret (1709) which takes a
critical look at French society of the times, and more specifically at
the corruption tainting the nation's tax system. Besides the moral
and satirical content of the play, the author shows us that France's
entrenched social strata were beginning to crumble, and that as far as
finances were concerned, nobles and lackeys could be on an equal
footing.
Cruse, Peter
Professor of Surgery
January 19, 1994
Archibald Menzies,
Naturalist-Surgeon to the Vancouver Expedition
Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) was first and foremost a horticulturalist
whose name is attached to many botanical species. However, he shipped
with Vancouver as surgeon, and was responsible for treating the various
illnesses of the seamen. Despite some personal conflicts, Vancouver
regarded Menzies very highly for his medical skills.
Drury, Shadia
Political Science, University of Calgary
October 15, 1999
Terror and Civilization: A Critique of Joseph de Maistre's
Concept of History
In this paper, I focus on the work of Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821).
I show that Maistre develops the assumptions of St. Augustine into a
radical political doctrine that justifies endless and senseless terror.
Maistre starts from three Augustinian assumptions:
(1) that history is the work of divine Providence, (2) that human
nature is depraved as a result of original sin, and (3) that the wages
of sin is death. With the help of these Augustinian assumptions,
Maistre turns Christianity into a metaphysics of terror. Writing in the
aftermath of the French Revolution, he maintains that all crimes of the
Revolution are the work of divine Providence, and that all are
necessary for the expiation of sin.
Unfortunately, the sins of the world are believed,
by Maistre as by Augustine, to be so great that no amount of innocent
suffering, not even the suffering of Christ, is enough to pay the debt
involved. As a result the whole earth, continually steeped in blood, is
nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be
sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite, until the
consummation of the world,
the extinction of evil, the death of death. (The Saint Petersburg
Dialogue,
Seventh Dialogue)
In the final analysis, the law of war, the law of
expiation by blood, the law of the suffering and sacrifice of the
innocent,
the spiritual law of the world, is a metaphysics of terror.
If killing the innocent, bloody massacres, and
senseless slaughter are all the work of divine Providence, then the God
of Christianity is a cruel and hateful God and not the God of love and
forgiveness. The
trouble is that Maistre's metaphysics of terror, his fascistic brand of
Christianity, and his avenging God, are on the ascendancy in the
terrorism
of the fundamentalist religious movements of our time.
Epstein, Marcelo
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of
Calgary
January 19, 2000
Who Invented Calculus?
The origins of
infinitesimal and integral
calculus can be traced back to Greek mathematics. The work of Eudoxus
of
Cnidos (408-355 BCE) opened the door for the rigorous concept of limit
and introduced a technique known as the method of exhaustion, a method
that permitted Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BCE) to correctly calculate areas and volumes.
Although important contributions were made
by Kepler, Cavalieri, Fermat, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Gregory and
other XVII-century mathematicians, the recognition of Calculus
as a significant new step in the history of mathematics and, in
particular, the clear understanding of the reciprocal relation between
integration and differentiation are the result of the independent works
of Newton
(1642-1727) and
Leibniz (1646-1716). In life, these two giants
became enmeshed in an ugly dispute over the question of priority. Newton, who had
done his
work first but did not publish it until much
later, was the main force behind a Royal Society investigation of the
matter
that, not surprisingly, ruled in his favour. Although essentially
equivalent, Leibniz's calculus, first published in 1684, contains
a superior notational ingredient conceived as part of Leibniz's
ambitious plan for creating a new universal language. So fit was
Leibniz's notation to its object, that it is still in use, as even a
cursory
look at the first page of the 1684 paper clearly shows. Newton's
attempts at minimizing the
importance of the notational issue and at claiming
that either Leibniz somehow copied his own ideas or, even if not,
"second inventors have no rights", failed to convince anyone in the
Continent.
Leibniz's calculus soon swept Europe,
while Newtonian partisanship ended up isolating English mathematics for
several generations. Taking
into consideration Newton's
undoubted priority and genius, it seems
that the judgment of posterity has been: Newton discovered Calculus, but
Leibniz
invented it.
This talk presented a lively account of all these
facts, offering the listener a guided tour of the basic
conceptual framework and introducing the Newtonian idea of fluxion and
its
Leibnizian counterpart, the differential. The role of infinite series,
analytic geometry and other important mathematical ingredients was
discussed in a historical context and illustrated by means of simple,
yet
important, examples. Through a presentation of the most significant
landmarks of the parallel lives of the two creators of Calculus, and a
dose of
insignificant detail and gossip, the human dimension of mathematics
came to life, in all its tragic beauty and pathos.
Epstein, Marcelo
Mechanical Engineering, University of Calgary
January 20, 1993
The Unnatural Philosophy of
Maupertuis
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) was the earliest
propounder of the "Principle of least action", according to which the
laws of Nature are the result of a rule of economy or efficiency. In
his deep metaphysical conviction that this principle must be true, he
was willing to adapt the particular form of his "action" to fit even
erroneous experimental evidence. His basic approach, however, turned
out to be essentially correct and has become one of the pillars of
modern science. Ridiculed by Voltaire, a former admirer, Maupertuis
thus ended up having the last laugh.
Esleben, Joerg
Germanic, Slavic & East Asian Studies, University of Calgary
March 7, 2003
Brahmins and Germans: Indomania among Late-Eighteenth-Century
German Intellectuals
In the late eighteenth century, German intellectuals were gripped by an
intense fascination with Indian culture. This fascination started with
Georg Forster’s translation of the classical Indian author Kālidasā’s
drama Śakuntalā in 1791, quickly spread to Herder, Goethe and the
brothers Schlegel, led to the development of a highly productive and
influential German Indology, and has continued as a strain in German
culture up to the present day. In my talk, I will outline the
beginnings of this German ‘Indomania’ in the late eighteenth century,
examine the motivations behind it, and intervene in an ongoing debate
over whether this fascination constituted a genuine intercultural
encounter or the appropriation of Indian by German culture in the
context of Eurocentric and colonial discourses.
Fink, Beatrice
French, University of Maryland
September 15, 1998
The Staff of Life (Bread in
Eighteenth-Century France)
From flour shortages and flour riots to the revolutionary "pain
d'égalité", from barley bread to potato bread, from
Parmentier's state-of-the-art bread-making/baking experiments to the
opening of a public bakery in Paris under Louis XVI, bread in
18th-Century France constitutes a sign as well as a consumable, with
social, political, and technological dimensions. In her talk, Prof.
Fink will dwell on the highlights of the above developments and their
cultural implications.
Froese, Katrin
Political Science, University of Calgary
November 25, 2003
Bloated Selves and Humble Selves in Rousseau and Nietzsche
Rousseau and Nietzsche both represent turning points in the Western
philosophical tradition. On the one hand, they extol the bold subject
whose main preoccupation is with self-creation and individual autonomy.
Yet, at the same time, Rousseau and Nietzsche offer criticisms of
the pervasive egoism that characterizes the modern West, and insist
that the forgetting of the self’s boundaries through others and through
nature is important if the malaise of modernity is to be overcome. This
talk will examine the tension represented in the works of Rousseau and
Nietzsche who both subscribe to the focus on self, and are critical of
the modern propensity to place the self on a pedestal which undermines
opportunities for genuine interconnection.
Gilby, William
Germanic, Slavic and East Asian Studies, University of Calgary
March 16, 1994
Friedrich Hölderlin: a
German Poet's Vision of the European Spirit in Transition
Born in 1770, Hölderlin's upbringing and academic situation
reflect the social and intellectual achievements of the 18th century.
Through discussions with his fellow students Hegel and Schelling, he
helped lay the foundation for German Idealism which strongly influenced
19th century thought. His discontent with the prevailing attitudes of
his time led him to envision the dawn of a reformed Europe.
Hölderlin's poetry and theoretical writings focus almost entirely
on preparing the way for this spiritual renewal until his voice was
silenced in 1806 by a devastating mental breakdown.
Goldstein, Jan
History, University of Chicago
October 20, 1995
The Imagination and the
Problematization of the Self at the End of the Ancien Régime in
France
The changes associated with the French Revolution, and already
adumbrated during the closing decades of the Old Regime, problematized
for contemporaries the nature of the human person, or self. According
to the eighteenth-century understanding of psychology, the imagination
was the most vulnerable component of that self, the one that would
unfailingly wreak havoc (on its owner and on others) if major
alterations in the social fabric were undertaken.
Govier, Trudy*
March 10, 2004
A Philosophical Entertainment
Deception and Rescue
A dialogue by Trudy Govier, exploring the ideas of Immanuel Kant in the
context of the philosophe Condorcet and the violence of the French
Revolution.
In this philosophical dialogue, a twentieth century radio interviewer
explors ethical dilemmas of rescue with Immanuel Kant, the French
philosophe Condorcet, and Rose Vernet, an unsung heroine who sheltered
Condorcet from the Terror in the French Revolution. Discussed are the
role of reason in reaching principled ethical decisions, and Kant's
surprising attitudes to the French Revolution. The Condorcet case, in
which a sheltered person lied to save the life of his rescuer,
contrasts interestingly with the oft-discussed example in which Kant
claimed that one could not justifiable tell a lie, even to protect
someone hiding from a vicious attacker.
*Trudy Govier is a philosopher active in the Calgary community. She is
the author of several books including FORGIVENESS AND REVENGE
(Routledge 2002) and A PRACTICAL STUDY OF ARGUMENT (Wadsworth, five
editions).
This dialogue is excerpted from a work in progress tentatively called
KANT AND THE AMBER LETTERS: A PHILOSOPHICAL MYSTERY.
Jordan, John
Dance, California State University, Fresno
Nov. 28, 2002
Pricked Dances: Defining Englishmen Through Dance in the
Pages of the Spectator
The Spectator, a popular and influential London periodical
published between 1711 and 1714, includes among its many topics of
discussion several references to dance and dancers. In these accounts,
the characteristics associated with men who dance coalesce into
consistent patterns. Dance and masculinity are placed in an uneasy
relationship such that dance serves as one indicator of a suspicious or
defective masculine character. These more typical unmasculine dancing
figures are not the only dancers presented, however. At least one male
dancer discussed in the paper introduces an alternate possible
relationship between dance and masculinity, free of any taint of
effeminacy. Distinctions in social class serve to differentiate and
make sense of these two divergent representations; the second figure is
clearly identified with the lower classes. Taken together, these
different versions of the dancing man help reveal the specific features
of English masculinity as it was constructed in the early
eighteenth-century.
Klosko, George
Politics, University of Virginia
September 26, 1997
Montesquieu and the Idea of
Value in the Social Sciences
Professor Klosko will focus on the intractable problem of values in the
social sciences. He will argue that even a pioneer in the scientific
study of society such as Montesquieu could not escape the taint of
ideology in his science.
Kramnick, Isaac
Government, Cornell University
March 21, 2001
Of Chains and Races: Metaphor in the Liberal Imagination
In his talk, Professor Kramnick looks at eighteenth-century liberal
social theory through the prism of changing metaphorical images of
society. The notion of a fixed hierarchical order, a chain of
unbroken rankings, is replaced by an individualist world view expressed
in the imagery of motion and "the race of life." Professor Kramnick is
author of The Rage of Edmund Burke, Republicanism and
Bourgeois Radicalism, and The Age of Ideology.
Lockwood, Lewis
Music, Harvard University
October 15, 1993
Beethoven and the Mozart Legacy
Beethoven's relationship to Mozart remains important throughout his
life, from his early apprentice years to his last period. Specific
biographical and musical evidence enables us to trace the changes in
this relationship from "imitation" to stylistic "appropriation" and
finally, to "assimilation". The Mozartian model becomes a basis for a
significant dimension of Beethoven's mature music that stands apart
from the "heroic" and constitutes an equally important strand of
Beethoven's mature achievement.
Martin, John Stephen
English, University of Calgary
March 17, 1993
Colonial and Revolutionary
American Autobiography: From Memoir to Self-Fiction
Professor Martin will survey the development of features in
autobiographical writing from John Winthrop to Ben Franklin. First, he
will show that earlier colonial "memoirs" are often as complex as later
autobiographical instances of the revolutionary period which use
fiction-like portrayals of the narrators. Second, he will explore the
changing philosophical depiction of selfhood as the American people
moved from a colonial to revolutionary posture of themselves within
their new world.
Melançon, Benoît
Études françaises, Université de Montréal
March 8, 2000
I’d Love to be Thrilled: The Current State of
Eighteenth-Century French Studies
Looking at recent publications, one could easily argue that
eighteenth-century studies are at a crossroads. An issue of a scholarly
journal and two books have in fact decided to take stock of the
situation in our field. In 1998, Dix-huitième siècle devoted its thirtieth issue to “La recherche aujourd’hui.” The same
year, Alberto Postigliola edited an international panorama of research
on the eighteenth century (La ricerca sul XVIII secolo. Un panorama
internazionale). Also in 1998, Michel Delon and Jochen Schlobach
inaugurated the new “International Eighteenth-Century Studies” series
(Honoré Champion) with a volume entitled Eighteenth-Century
Research: Objects, Methods and Institutions (1945-1995). The
millennium notwithstanding, why this sudden urge to count heads? I
would suggest that this urge is but a sign of a larger concern with the
work we try to do. In other words, we are taking stock because things
are perhaps not what they should be.
I will not go as far as saying that no interesting books have been
published recently in our field. I think highly, for instance, of Larry
Bongie’s Sade: A Biographical Essay (1998), and of Élisabeth Bourguinat’s Le Siècle du persiflage:
1734-1789 (1998). These are two very different and well-written
studies that raise important issues—What are we allowed to say today
about Sade’s life? Why is banter crucial to eighteenth-century
esthetics in France?—while remaining scientifically accurate and
intellectually rewarding.
Still: when one considers literary studies—not historical works—that
have raised important issues over the last few years, the examples are
scarce. What, then, are the potential avenues of investigation? A few
years ago, epistolary studies provided readers with new approaches to
reading one of literature’s oldest forms. Other approaches may also
prove fruitful. The first
is the use of computers in literary studies. A question such as “How
did
one read the Encyclopédie in the eighteenth century?”
may be
answered anew now that the text and illustrations of Diderot and
D’Alembert’s work are available on line. Then there is the study of
marginal authors, not
to show that they were unjustly forgotten—they usually aren’t—, but to
understand
what one meant by the words littérature or philosophe
in the Siècle des lumières. Stimulating work
could also come from contact with new theories—queer studies, gender
studies, cultural studies—largely foreign to French eighteenth-century
criticism.
How can we explain the current state of eighteenth-century French
studies? The situation in France may be explained in part by the
structure of the university system, and its emphasis on the monumental doctorat
d’État, by the problems raised by interdisciplinarity, and
by the hiring process of University professors as a source of
intellectual conservatism. Politics
played a major role in the burgeoning of eighteenth-century French
studies
during the 1960s and 1970s, as there seemed to be a rather direct link
between
the politics of the time and the politics of the eighteenth century.
This
is no longer the case. In Canada, if one is to judge by publications,
conference
programmes, and recent dissertations, the research is very rarely
theory-oriented,
and it does suffer from that.
There are those who would say that literary criticism does not
necessarily have to thrill its readers. As a critic, you may wish to
simply inform them, or convince them, or please them. All these goals
are legitimate—but they do not always make for an exciting read, and
excitement is important in literary criticism.
Merrett, Robert
English, University of Alberta
March 20, 2002
The Eighteenth Century: Literary Learning?
(1) Philosophies of Liberal Arts Education: openness to the world;
institutional pluralism;
Enlightenment practicalities
(2) Social, political, and aesthetic criticism in the plural
forms of The
Beggar's Opera; high and low
culture fused
(3) Natural history, ecology, and the novel; secular and spiritual
conflicts over setting; geological
and astronomical time; the adventure
story
(4) Literary and cultural consumption: the case of
England and France,
1730-1789; peace and war;
comparative literary history
(5) Cultural literacy: autodidacticism; learning by error, by
deferral, and
by imaginative involvement;
the road of excess leads to the palace of
wisdom
Morstein, Petra von
Philosophy, University of Calgary
September 21, 1994
The Necessity of Aesthetic
Experience: Kant and Schopenhauer
Aesthetic experience temporarily frees both the perceiver and the
perceived: The perceiver transcends concepts and purposes (Kant) and,
respectively, is detached from the will to which all knowledge and
action is subjected (Schopenhauer); the perceived is present in and of
itself. By contrast with everyday perception, aesthetic experience is
contemplative, non-intentional and true to reality. Kant and Schopenhauer lead us to understand that aesthetic experiences constitute non-propositional knowledge which is independent of truth-conditions and supercedes the limits of propositional knowledge. Kant demonstrates the cognitive indispensability of aesthetic experiences, Schopenhauer their moral and psychological indispensability. Kant's account of aesthetic experiences lays the ground for Schopenhauer's view of the pre-eminence of art in human life. Both Kant and Schopenhauer supply important resources for contemporary reflection on cognition and morality in terms of beauty and art.
Norton, Robert E.
University of Notre Dame
February 11, 2000
Gundolf's Goethe: German Classicism and the George Circle
In 1916, Friedrich Gundolf published Goethe, his monumental
monograph on
Germany's greatest writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832). It
became a best seller, with well over 50,000 copies in print by the time
of Gundolf's death in 1931. It also exerted a profound influence on the
study of literature in Germany, shaping the way scholars wrote and
thought about literature for decades after. In his talk,
Professor
Norton will discuss the relation between that book and the intellectual
context out of which it grew, namely the Circle around the poet
Stefan
George.
Onuf, Peter S.
Department of History, University of Virginia
October 28, 2004
Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Empire
Professor Onuf will trace the development
of Jefferson's geopolitical thought,
showing
how his ideas about federalism, limited government, and an expanding
"empire for liberty" prepared the way for territorial expansion and
"manifest destiny." Jefferson
believed that the American Revolution constituted an epochal moment in
world
history and that the first great modern self-governing nation would
naturally
ascend to continental and hemispheric hegemony. He will suggest
that the
peculiar mix of "idealistic" and "realistic" tendencies in
American foreign policy are traceable to the third president's
"republican
empire."
Osler, Margaret J.
History, University of Calgary
March 20, 1996
From Immanent Natures to Nature as Artifice:
The Reinterpretation of Final Causes through the Times of Boyle and Newton
According to traditional historiography the natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution changed the Aristotelian conception of causality to eliminate teleology. Yet many of them included Final Causes in the argument from Design as a proof of God's Providential relationship to Creation and of continuing Divine activity. The mechanical philosophers in fact reinterpreted Aristotelian concepts while translating the old metaphysics of matter, form, and the four causes into the new metaphysics of matter and motion.
Potter, Tiffany
English, University of Calgary
February 11, 1999
Honest Sins : Henry Fielding’s Libertinism
"Virtue forbids not the satisfying our appetites, virtue
forbids us only
to glut and destroy them"
-Henry Fielding Fielding's reputation as a warm-blooded but essentially
prudent moralist
is reconsidered here in light of significant evidence that he
subscribed
to the powerful cultural discourse of libertinism throughout his
life,
manifesting in his best-known works libertinism's shift from the
violent, hypersexualized, Hobbesian tradition to a good-natured
Georgian
libertinism that continues to disrupt social, religious, sexual,
and
philosophical systems even as it is mediated by the contemporary
culture
of sentiment.
Rice, Paul
Music, Memorial University
November 9, 1999
Musical Nationalism and the Vauxhall Gardens
Of the various pleasure gardens open during the summer months in
eighteenth-century London, it was Vauxhall Gardens that had the
strongest association with the performance of music. Its
popularity with Londoners only increased after Jonathan Tyers became
its proprietor in 1728, and introduced numerous improvements. The
Gardens were one of the few places where members of
different social classes could enjoy the same entertainment.
Equally exceptional was that the music of British composers happily
coexisted at Vauxhall
with that of their continental peers. Professor Rice will examine
this
social phenomenon with references to the numerous engravings made of
the
gardens during the eighteenth century, and to recordings of the music
featured
in concerts there.
Ritchie, Stanley
School of Music, Indiana University
March 19, 2004
"The Violin Works of J.S. Bach: History and Performance"
Co-sponsored by the Centre for Research in the Fine Arts.
Stanley Ritchie is one of the world's foremost interpreters of the
Baroque violin and a specialist in the performance practice of the
Baroque period, particularly the music of Bach. In this
lecture/demonstration, Prof. Ritchie will examine Bach's violin sonatas
as they may have been understood in
his own day. As a case study, a violin student from the Department of
Music will perform excerpts from Bach's D-minor Partita with Professor
Ritchie providing commentary.
Schmidt, Rachel
French, Italian and Spanish, University of Calgary
September 18, 1996
The Canonization of Don Quixote through Eighteenth-Century Illustrated Editions
In addition to being widely published and translated, Cervantes' Don Quixote is also one of the most widely illustrated works of fiction. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have become iconographic figures, one tall and ethereal, the other squat and earthy, riding across a barren landscape. The development of this pictorial tradition dovetails with the canonization of the novel in the eighteenth-century de luxe editions. The visual images themselves prove to be critical in both senses of the word: they manifest important interpretations of the novel reinforcing and/or differing from the dominant readings of critics, and subsequently shape the historical responses of readers to the text.
Sell, Alan
Chair of Christian Thought, United Theological College, Aberystwyth
February 17, 1995
Evangelic and Celestial Truth: Variations on a Theme in Eighteenth-Century Britain
A discussion of reason in relation to revelation, faith, and Scripture, from John Locke to the rational divines at the end of the eighteenth century. The variety of views will be illustrated; the legacy of this period's reflection upon the themes in question will be assessed; and a note of caution will be sounded to the effect that blanket judgements upon the Enlightenment, whether positive or negative, are out of place, and obscure more than they reveal.
Shantz, Douglas H.
Associate Professor of Christian Thought, Religious Studies, University
of Calgary
Sept. 27, 2001
In Weakness Strength: The Common Pietist Archetype for Men's
and Women's Spiritual Autobiographies
The special focus of my study is women's spiritual autobiography in the
German Pietist tradition, and the degree to which their writings
differed from men's spiritual autobiographies.
Historiographical Significance
The study builds on the proliferation of studies in recent years on the
genre of autobiography. Since the 1950s autobiography
has been a popular focus of attention for literary critics. Women's
autobiography was acknowledged as a field about 1980. A recent study
has argued that "there are [distinct] archetypal life scripts for men
and for women which show remarkable persistence over time." (Jill
Conway, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (New
York 1998), p. 7). For men the pattern is adapted from the story of "the epic hero in classical antiquity." Women, on the other hand,
inherited a different tradition of autobiography, rooted in monastic
religious life. Instead of promoting a sense of agency and heroism, the
focus was upon women's mystical experiences of divine illumination. My
paper will test this paradigm for understanding the gendering of
spiritual autobiography, applying it not to Catholic writers but to
late 17th C. and 18th C. Protestant autobiographers, specifically
Pietist ones.
Argument
The paper examines the autobiographical writings of August Hermann
Francke (1663-1727) and Anna Nitschmann (1715-1760), second wife of the
Moravian Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf. I argue that while the two
Pietist autobiographies demonstrate some contrasting features that
reflect gender differences, more impressive is how the autobiographers
employ metaphors in a way that crosses such gender lines. Francke, for
example, employed metaphors of family intimacy, while Anna Nitschmann
used heroic archetypes. This mixing is attributed to peculiarities of
their upbringing and vocation as Pietist leaders.
Sources and Methodology
17th C. English Puritans and German Pietists produced thousands of
hand-written autobiographies as an exercize in spiritual reflection,
few of these ever being published. In recent times Pietist scholars
have begun turning their attention to this rich resource. This study
will focus on an autobiographical text by Anna Nitschmann included in a
recent edition of Pietist women's autobiographies edited by Martin
Jung, Mein Herz brannte richtig in der Liebe Jesu: Autobiographien
frommer Frauen aus Pietismus und Erweckungsbewegung (Aachen 1999),
compared with the autobiography written in 1694 by the Pietist
patriarch August Hermann Francke.
Spangler, Jewel
History, University of Calgary
February 12, 2004
Revolutionary Methodism: Politics, Class, Conversion,
and the expansion of Methodist Fellowship in the Southern United
States
Between 1770 and 1850, the Methodist Church expanded from a fringe sect
to the largest Christian denomination in the United States, but this
process was anything but simple. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War
brought Methodism into question for its ties to the Church of England
and the sect was also forced to negotiate its way in a new country
increasingly divided around slavery and its social and political
implications.
This talk will examine the beginnings of Methodism in the American
South to argue that the imperial crisis, while threatening to Methodist
expansion, paradoxically also created a context in which Methodist
teachings could effectively attract southerners to fellowship and
provide an effective framework for expanding membership over time.
Stam, Hank
Psychology, University of Calgary
September 20, 1995
Giambattista Vico and the Geisteswissenschaft Tradition in the Social Sciences
Giambattista Vico has emerged in various arguments of the "New Historicism" and other "post-positivist" social sciences as an important contributor to our understanding of discourse. This talk will address the manner in which Vico is allied to current theories of discourse and the contested interpretations of his works by social scientists searching for a critique of Enlightenment assumptions of subjectivity.
Stephanson, Raymond
English, University of Saskatchewan
November 3, 1998
Male Organs of Generation and the Poetical Character in the Eighteenth Century
Writers in every literary-historical period have fashioned collective discourses and myths about the nature and origins of their creative acts. In the period 1650-1750, male literary communities self-consciously described their own creativity in conceptual metaphors drawn from land ownership, property, law, classical mythology, and new accounts of the nervous system. But they also used reproductive aspects of the human body to characterize certain features of the creative process. This lecture examines some of the cultural backgrounds which might explain the complex intersections of the male body and male authorship in the 18th century, particularly the various links between the male mind and male genitalia.
Struc, Roman
Germanic, Slavic and East Asian Studies, University of Calgary
February
16, 1996
Romantic Irony: Between the Absolute and the Relative
Using prototypes in Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, the young German Romantics made the classical rhetorical device of irony the cornerstone of an emerging literary theory. For them the detachment of the writer and the unresolved paradoxes inherent in life led to a playful recognition of abundance of life forms. "Romantic Irony" characteristically destroys created illusions. Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Marx attacked this kind of irony for its "negativity", but modern literature accepted it, while post-modern writing practices it with some relish.
Sutherland, Christine
Faculty of General Studies, University of Calgary
November 20, 1996
Mary Astell and the Call to Reason
Mary Astell, whose writings were published between 1694 and 1709, was famous in her own day for her impassioned promotion of an academic education for women. Today her work is valued chiefly for the insight it gives into what may be called the feminist issues of her time. Recently, she has been recognized as one of the first thinkers to critique the philosophy of John Locke. This address will focus on her insistence upon the rational powers of women and their moral responsibility to develop such powers, not only for their own benefit, but also to serve the community and contribute to the common good.
Svilpis, Janis
English, University of Calgary
September 15, 1993
From Golden Age to Desert Island in English Literature
J. J. Rousseau praised Robinson Crusoe's imaginary isolation as a way or "rising superior to prejudice" and judging everything "by its real utility". In fact, eliminating division of labour, commerce, and politics from the desert island made it a site of ideological duplicity. In a process beginning a generation before Defoe's novel, this elimination constituted the alienated bourgeois individual as a central figure of English culture.
Wall, Anthony
French, Italian and Spanish, University of Calgary
November 15, 1995
Diderot and his Bodies that Speak
As an inveterate materialist thinker, one cognizant of several ancient traditions, Diderot gives us a materialist philosophy of language in his fictional texts. One of the most interesting aspects of this artistic writing can be seen in his language's ability to accommodate non-linguistic meanings in the words that are used. Nowhere is this complicated process of presenting extra-linguistic material in linguistic garb more visible than in the numerous talking bodies that populate Diderot's writing. When we read Diderot the writer, we are often compelled to imagine that words have a body and that bodies function as words. The scandal of Diderot's bodies that speak consists in refusing us the ancient privilege of dividing the mind from the body.
Westra, Haijo
Greek and Roman Studies, University of Calgary
Feb. 13, 2003
Classical Sources of the Baron de Lahontan’s Description of
Canada
I intend to demonstrate how the critique of French society by the
native chief Adario in the Dialogues of Lahontan is predicated on the
Dialogues of Lucian which he carried with him to New France. In
particular, Cynic critiques of Greek society as conveyed by Lucian
(along with the debunking of Cynic moral rigor) and the genre of
Menippean satire will be shown to be major sources for the
representation of early Canada.
Williams, Michael
Computer Science, University of Calgary
March 18, 1998
Computers in the 18th Century
Mathematics in the 18th century was not like the subject we know today. In previous centuries, it was considered more of a practical discipline and many of its practitioners were concerned with easing the burdens of people who were involved with trade (particularly seaborne navigation), the production of instruments such as sun dials, and the creation of devices which would do jobs such as finding the volume of casks of wine. This illustrated talk will examine some of these computing devices, the people who created them, and answer such questions as "why does a student set of mathematical instruments contain a divider als well as a compass?"
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