Humanities Symposium to focus on global studies

Posted 10/13/00

Dartmouth's Humanities Center will open the school year with its first major event, a symposium on "Global Humanities," Friday, Oct. 20, and Saturday, Oct. 21.

Humanists from around the world, including directors of humanities centers in Australia, China, Canada and the Netherlands, will gather at Dartmouth to discuss the role of such centers in the contemporary world.

In addition to panel discussions with these directors and several cultural critics, novelists Samuel Delany and J.M. Coetzee will deliver plenary lectures.

Global humanities was selected as the topic for the symposium in part because it reflects the College's ongoing interest in globalization and its effects, said Jonathan Crewe, Humanities Center Director and Professor of English.

Created last year to initiate and coordinate programming and support scholarly research, the Humanities Center has co-sponsored several smaller events in its short history. The symposium, however, will be the first major event hosted by the Center.

While humanities are at the core of the Center's mission, the organization has an interest in promoting interdisciplinary projects, particularly those that go beyond conventional interdisciplinary relationships, like joint projects with the physical and cognitive sciences.

For this fall, the Center has several interdisciplinary projects in progress, including the current Humanities Institute on "Borderlands/LaFrontera." Other interdisciplinary programs on the schedule are a symposium on cognitive neuroscience and the humanities, a seminar cosponsored with the Human Biology Program on interdisciplinary teaching, a student-initiated lecture series on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered identities, and a conference on Renaissance portraiture at the Hood museum. The symposium is free and open to the public.