Symposia/Tertulias 2012-2013

Trinity 100/126,Thursdays 4-5:30pm and Fridays 3-5 pm unless otherwise noted
Director: Sarah Pike, 898-6341, spike@csuchico.edu

October | January | February | March | May

Oct. 10 *

"Thomas Kuhn on Scientific Revolutions—50 Years Later." Zanja Yudell, Philosophy.
Humanities Center Tertulia, Trinity 126, 5-6 pm.
Optional reading on the topic.

Oct. 17 *
Reading group tertulia on Martin Puchner, “The Formation of a Genre,” a chapter about the Communist Manifesto from Puchner’s book Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes.
If you would like a pdf of the chapter, please contact Sarah Pike at spike@csuchico.edu.

Jan. 30 *

Discussion of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.

Humanities Center Tertulia, Trinity 126, 5:00 pm.

Feb. 13

Luz Méndez de la Vega's Struggle With Faith in Her Collection of Poetry Eva sin Dios (Godless Eve): A psychodynamic Perspective.

Rony Garrido, International Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Humanities Center "Work in Progress"

Tertulia, Trinity 126, 5:00 pm.

The cultural fabric of Guatemalan society is one in which women writers must struggle to establish a literary reputation. Luz Méndez de la Vega has been no exception. However, her first collection of poetry Eva sin Dios (Eve Without God, 1979) illustrates the need for women to break away from patriarchal impositions. Eva sin Dios can be seen as the author´s journey into herself, where the poems serve as a psychodynamic self-exploration and, ironically, as a rediscovery of the therapeutic value of faith.

March 13 *

The Haitian Revolution in the Transatlantic Imagination

Kristen Mahlis, Multicultural and Gender Studies.

Humanities Center "Work in Progress"

Tertulia, Trinity 126, 5:00 pm.

Mahlis will discuss the book manuscript she is completing that explores how and why the Haitian Revolution provoked the truly transatlantic literary response that it did, compelling a diverse group of writers in the circum-Atlantic world—France, England, the Caribbean, and the United States—to narrate the revolution.

March 28

Modernism as a Revolution. *

Join us for a panel discussion with Geoff Baker (English), Laird Easton (History) and guests Jonathan Steinberg (University of Pennsylvania) and Marion Kant (University of Pennsylvania and Pembroke College, Cambridge University). Trinity 100, 5:00 pm.

“On or about December 1910, human character changed.” –Virginia Woolf.

What was revolutionary about aesthetic modernism? Can it be even considered a revolution? Did it have revolutionary implications beyond the aesthetic realm?

Jonathan Steinberg is The Walther H. Annenberg Professor of Modern History at the University of Pennsylvania. His latest book is Bismarck: A Life was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. Marion Kant is a dance historian and musicologist at the University of Pennsylvania and Pembroke College, Cambridge University. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ballet and Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich.

May 2 

‘For Love of Clarity’: Émile Zola and the Political Aesthetic of Realistic Literature. *

Geoff Baker, English. “Work in Progress” Tertulia.

Trinity 126, 5:00 pm.

Émile Zola declared in his essay “The Experimental Novel” (1880) that fiction should offer scientific data about social ills, so that those in a position to eliminate those ills could do so. This involved an avowed commitment to content over style in his works, and yet his novels were repeatedly praised for their revolutionary stylistic achievements. Geoff Baker discusses the political potential Zola’s contemporaries saw in the very qualities of his work that he hoped to minimize.

*The Humanities Center's theme for this year is "Revolutions."