13th Annual Humanities Colloquium: Tradition, Critique, & Imagination
September 9, 2019 · 4:30 pm—6:00 pm · Chancellor Green Rotunda
Humanities Council
The Humanities Council kicks off each academic year with an interdisciplinary Colloquium featuring humanities faculty.
Tradition, Critique, & Imagination
Colloquium: 4:30-6:00 PM, Chancellor Green Rotunda
In The Value of the Humanities, Helen Small tells us that “the work of the humanities is frequently descriptive, or appreciative, or imaginative, or provocative, or speculative, more than it is critical.” At the same time, recent debates in various disciplines suggest that this range is potentially threatened by the ubiquity of critique, practiced as a relentless hermeneutics of suspicion. How should tradition, critique, and imagination interact within humanistic inquiry today?
The Humanities Council welcomes the University community to gather for a wide-ranging conversation about these central issues in our research, teaching, and intellectual life more broadly.
This year’s panel features distinguished Princeton scholars whose work represents different approaches and historical periods.
Speakers:
Anne A. Cheng, English; American Studies
“The Critical Exhaustion of WOC”
Jonathan Gold, Religion; South Asian Studies
“Criticism as an Expression of Sociocultural Mindfulness”
Daniel Heller-Roazen, Comparative Literature
“Imagination in a Forgotten Tradition”
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Classics
“Criticism and the Rejection of Pious Antiquarianism”
Moderator:
Eric S. Gregory, Religion; Chair, Humanities Council
