Dean's Seminars at the School of Advanced Study

School of Advanced Study

Dean's Seminar - Moral Constitution: Elizabeth Carey's 'Tragedy of Mariam' and the Color of Blood

Professor Kimberly Anne Coles, School of Advanced Study Visiting Fellow, 2012/13

Chair: Professor Roger Kain, CBE, FBA, Dean of the School of Advanced Study

If The Tragedy of Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of the characters of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. Carey’s Mariam posits moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters.

School of Advanced Study

Dean's Seminar - Moral Constitution: Elizabeth Carey's 'Tragedy of Mariam' and the Color of Blood

Professor Kimberly Anne Coles, School of Advanced Study Visiting Fellow, 2012/13

Chair: Professor Roger Kain, CBE, FBA, Dean of the School of Advanced Study

If The Tragedy of Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of the characters of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. Carey’s Mariam posits moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters.

School of Advanced Study

Dean's Seminar - Moral Constitution: Elizabeth Carey's 'Tragedy of Mariam' and the Color of Blood

Professor Kimberly Anne Coles, School of Advanced Study Visiting Fellow, 2012/13

Chair: Professor Roger Kain, CBE, FBA, Dean of the School of Advanced Study

If The Tragedy of Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of the characters of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. Carey’s Mariam posits moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters.

School of Advanced Study & The Warburg Institute

Looting, stealing and purchasing: the Western acquisition of Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period

Professor Alastair Hamilton, Arcadian Visiting Research Professor, The Warburg Institute

Chair: Professor Peter Mack, Director, The Warburg Institute

The lecture surveys the various means by which European collectors acquired Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period and how they established which manuscripts they wanted to acquire. The emphasis will be on the looting carried out during the wars against the Ottomans and the early colonial wars, on the subterfuges necessary for a western collector to buy Islamic manuscripts in the Arab world and to persuade the monastic librarians to part with Christian Arabic manuscripts, and on western efforts to establish a cultural canon in order to identify works of historical and literary importance.

School of Advanced Study & The Warburg Institute

Looting, stealing and purchasing: the Western acquisition of Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period

Professor Alastair Hamilton, Arcadian Visiting Research Professor, The Warburg Institute

Chair: Professor Peter Mack, Director, The Warburg Institute

The lecture surveys the various means by which European collectors acquired Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period and how they established which manuscripts they wanted to acquire. The emphasis will be on the looting carried out during the wars against the Ottomans and the early colonial wars, on the subterfuges necessary for a western collector to buy Islamic manuscripts in the Arab world and to persuade the monastic librarians to part with Christian Arabic manuscripts, and on western efforts to establish a cultural canon in order to identify works of historical and literary importance.

School of Advanced Study & The Warburg Institute

Looting, stealing and purchasing: the Western acquisition of Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period

Professor Alastair Hamilton, Arcadian Visiting Research Professor, The Warburg Institute

Chair: Professor Peter Mack, Director, The Warburg Institute

The lecture surveys the various means by which European collectors acquired Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period and how they established which manuscripts they wanted to acquire. The emphasis will be on the looting carried out during the wars against the Ottomans and the early colonial wars, on the subterfuges necessary for a western collector to buy Islamic manuscripts in the Arab world and to persuade the monastic librarians to part with Christian Arabic manuscripts, and on western efforts to establish a cultural canon in order to identify works of historical and literary importance.

Dean's Seminar - Modern Homes in the Making: Otto Neurath, Josef Frank and Anglo-Austrian Policies of Social Housing, 1919-1945

During the summer of 1932, the International Housing Exposition offered working-class families in Vienna the opportunity to purchase homes designed by a diverse group of leading international architects. For the sociologist Otto Neurath, who collaborated closely with the architect Josef Frank on the planning and promotion of this exhibition, this new approach to housing would result in a maximum of happiness (Glücksmaximum) for the working class. Upon emigrating to Oxford in 1941, Neurath sought to adapt interwar policies of Austrian architecture and sociability to the British context.

Speaker:Dr Sabrina Rahman, Visiting Fellow, School of Advanced Study and Leverhulme Trust

Chair: Professor William Marshall, Director, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies

Dean's Seminar - Modern Homes in the Making: Otto Neurath, Josef Frank and Anglo-Austrian Policies of Social Housing, 1919-1945

During the summer of 1932, the International Housing Exposition offered working-class families in Vienna the opportunity to purchase homes designed by a diverse group of leading international architects. For the sociologist Otto Neurath, who collaborated closely with the architect Josef Frank on the planning and promotion of this exhibition, this new approach to housing would result in a maximum of happiness (Glücksmaximum) for the working class. Upon emigrating to Oxford in 1941, Neurath sought to adapt interwar policies of Austrian architecture and sociability to the British context.

Speaker:Dr Sabrina Rahman, Visiting Fellow, School of Advanced Study and Leverhulme Trust

Chair: Professor William Marshall, Director, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies

Dean's Seminar

Dean's Seminar - Are we all synaesthetes? Rare and common cases of sensory unions

Speakers:Dr Ophelia Deroy, Marie Curie Researcher (FP7), Centre for the Study of the Senses

Chair: Professor Barry Smith, Director, Institute of Philosophy

Synaesthesia (‘perceiving together’ in Ancient Greek) is a condition where people have “a conscious experience of systematically induced sensory attributes that are not experienced by most people under comparable conditions” (Grossenbacher & Lovelace, 2001, p. 36). Certain synaesthetes will for instance report visualising colours when hearing musical notes or seeing black letters on a page. Everyone is however sensitive to surprising unions between the senses, feeling for instance that a high pitch sound is ‘brighter‘ than a lower-pitch one, or that certain shapes or images go better with certain musical attributes. Should we consider, as many researchers have explicitly or implicitly accepted, that these unions represent a weak form of synaesthesia? What does it imply for the study of these two phenomena and the origins of synaesthesia?

Dean's Seminar

Dean's Seminar - Are we all synaesthetes? Rare and common cases of sensory unions

Speakers:Dr Ophelia Deroy, Marie Curie Researcher (FP7), Centre for the Study of the Senses

Chair: Professor Barry Smith, Director, Institute of Philosophy

Synaesthesia (‘perceiving together’ in Ancient Greek) is a condition where people have “a conscious experience of systematically induced sensory attributes that are not experienced by most people under comparable conditions” (Grossenbacher & Lovelace, 2001, p. 36). Certain synaesthetes will for instance report visualising colours when hearing musical notes or seeing black letters on a page. Everyone is however sensitive to surprising unions between the senses, feeling for instance that a high pitch sound is ‘brighter‘ than a lower-pitch one, or that certain shapes or images go better with certain musical attributes. Should we consider, as many researchers have explicitly or implicitly accepted, that these unions represent a weak form of synaesthesia? What does it imply for the study of these two phenomena and the origins of synaesthesia?