News & Events

Professor Richard Moran (Harvard University): "Narrative, Anti-Narrative, and Self-Understanding"

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Professor Peter Goldie (University of Manchester): "Narrative Thinking, Emotion, and Autobiographical Memory"

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

In his talk Professor Goldie will argue that two notions are the key to understanding autobiographical memory. First, there is dramatic irony. In the literal sense of dramatic irony, the theater audience know something that one of the characters does not know. Here it is deployed in the sense that, in remembering, one now knows what one did not know then. Secondly there is free indirect style. In the literal sense of this term, the author invites us to see through the character’s eyes and yet see more than the character can see. Here it is deployed in the sense of its psychological correlate, where what one remembers is bound up with what one now knows, and with one’s evaluation of, and emotional response to, what one remembers. Autobiographical memories, then, are truly reconstruction not retrieval.

Peter Goldie is Samuel Hall Chair and Head of Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He has also been principal investigator in two Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC] projects in aesthetics, one of conceptual art (about which he is currently writing a book), and one on aesthetic psychology. He is part of HUMAINE, a major EUNetwork of Excellence Research Project into human machine emotional interactions.

Professor Joshua Landy (Stanford University): "Narrative Form and the 'Meaning' of a Life"

Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 5 p.m.

Though they often appeal to literary fictions as examples, narrative theorists typically have little or nothing to say about the role of the aesthetic. Landy's talk seeks to rectify this omission by offering reasons to take novelistic form seriously, as a way of introducing power -- not intelligibility -- into a life. Further, it raises the question of whether narrativity is even the best way of imparting unity to a life or whether, under certain circumstances, lyric poetry may be a more appropriate (and effective) model.

Joshua Landy is associate professor of French at Stanford University, where he co-directs Stanford's Initiative in Philosophy and Literature. He is author of Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004); editor, with Claude Bremond and Thomas Pavel, of Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1995); and editor, with Michael Saler, of The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford, 2009). He is currently completing a second book, How to Do Things with Fictions.

William Waters, who will serve as Respondent, is Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Boston University.

IPR Announces Lecture Series and Course for 2009-10: Narrative Meaning-Narrative Wisdom

This series of lectures will explore the importance of philosophical and religious narrative in human self-understanding, culminating with a conference in Spring 2010 on philosophical and intellectual life-story writing.

As in previous years, the IPR will offer in parallel to the public lecture series a seminar course for graduates and undergraduates that will incorporate lectures in the course design (PH 456/656, RN 397/697 STH TT819). For more information, contact Professor Allen Speight, Institute for Philosophy and Religion, casp8@bu.edu.

(Course times for Fall 2009: Wednesdays 5-8 pm)

IPR Announces Lecture Series for 2009-10: Narrative Meaning-Narrative Wisdom

What is the role of story or narrative in human understanding? What specific human cognitive or imaginative capacities are required for the construction and discernment of narrative patterns in our lives? This series of lectures will explore the importance of philosophical and religious narrative in human self-understanding, culminating with a conference in Spring 2010 on philosophical and intellectual life-story writing.

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