Humanities Lectures

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the third lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, History-Writing and Moral Community in China. The Chinese claim, seen with increasing frequency in current soft-power propaganda campaigns, of "5000 years of history" needs to be read in light of a process, over 2000 years long itself, of consensus-building by, of and for historians. How does such a thing as the Chinese Empire become, first an imaginary solution, then an inescapable reality, for a large part of humanity? The arts of rhetorical reading help us to see the successive articulations of what we now know as "China" or "Zhongguo." 2 October 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the second lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series. Western political philosophy, at its beginning (Plato's Republic), introduces an analogy between medical treatment and political reform that, like all metaphors, has consequences on both the supposedly different domains that it incorporates. As long as the metaphor is viewed as a mere analogy, however, the practical relation of medicine to state survival is obscured. The historical development, through a series of political theorists, some of them physicians, explains the in-between status of the field of public health. 22 September 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the second lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series. Western political philosophy, at its beginning (Plato's Republic), introduces an analogy between medical treatment and political reform that, like all metaphors, has consequences on both the supposedly different domains that it incorporates. As long as the metaphor is viewed as a mere analogy, however, the practical relation of medicine to state survival is obscured. The historical development, through a series of political theorists, some of them physicians, explains the in-between status of the field of public health. 22 September 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the second lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series. Western political philosophy, at its beginning (Plato's Republic), introduces an analogy between medical treatment and political reform that, like all metaphors, has consequences on both the supposedly different domains that it incorporates. As long as the metaphor is viewed as a mere analogy, however, the practical relation of medicine to state survival is obscured. The historical development, through a series of political theorists, some of them physicians, explains the in-between status of the field of public health. 22 September 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the first lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, Oral vs. Written: The Curious History of a Cultural Distinction.

Though it has become part of our common-sense understanding, the idea of a deep and comprehensive difference between the ways of thinking in predominantly oral and predominantly written cultures dates to the early twentieth century, at the most, and received its impetus from polemics now largely forgotten. By retracing this history, we can work out a genealogy for media studies that will accommodate a larger definition of the human. 18 September 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the first lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, Oral vs. Written: The Curious History of a Cultural Distinction.

Though it has become part of our common-sense understanding, the idea of a deep and comprehensive difference between the ways of thinking in predominantly oral and predominantly written cultures dates to the early twentieth century, at the most, and received its impetus from polemics now largely forgotten. By retracing this history, we can work out a genealogy for media studies that will accommodate a larger definition of the human. 18 September 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the first lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, Oral vs. Written: The Curious History of a Cultural Distinction.

Though it has become part of our common-sense understanding, the idea of a deep and comprehensive difference between the ways of thinking in predominantly oral and predominantly written cultures dates to the early twentieth century, at the most, and received its impetus from polemics now largely forgotten. By retracing this history, we can work out a genealogy for media studies that will accommodate a larger definition of the human. 18 September 2014

In this conversation Tim Ashton, a former member of the Armed Offenders and Special Tactics group in the New Zealand Police force, talks with Professor Kevin Clements about guns, gun control and combating hypermasculinity in Aotearoa-New Zealand. In 1990 Tim was one of the Special Tactics team that shot David Gray in Aramoana. Over the course of his career he has been involved in many incidents where offenders have taken their own lives after killing others, including partners and children. Tim has been shot in the course of his duty and has received two medals for bravery. 15 September 2014

In this conversation Tim Ashton, a former member of the Armed Offenders and Special Tactics group in the New Zealand Police force, talks with Professor Kevin Clements about guns, gun control and combating hypermasculinity in Aotearoa-New Zealand. In 1990 Tim was one of the Special Tactics team that shot David Gray in Aramoana. Over the course of his career he has been involved in many incidents where offenders have taken their own lives after killing others, including partners and children. Tim has been shot in the course of his duty and has received two medals for bravery. 15 September 2014

In this conversation Tim Ashton, a former member of the Armed Offenders and Special Tactics group in the New Zealand Police force, talks with Professor Kevin Clements about guns, gun control and combating hypermasculinity in Aotearoa-New Zealand. In 1990 Tim was one of the Special Tactics team that shot David Gray in Aramoana. Over the course of his career he has been involved in many incidents where offenders have taken their own lives after killing others, including partners and children. Tim has been shot in the course of his duty and has received two medals for bravery. 15 September 2014