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Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................6
PAL/FHI Mellon Seminar: The Other.......................................10
PAL for Graduate Students..........................................................14
Co-Sponsored Events.....................................................................16
Young Scholars Workshop............................................................18
Writing is Thinking 2017-18........................................................20
Other Events......................................................................................22
Duke-Stanford Annual Graduate Student Conference ...24
PAL Graduate Students Certificate..........................................26
PAL Visiting Scholars......................................................................28
PAL Steering Committee..............................................................30
PAL People..........................................................................................31
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In Memoriam
Stanley Cavell (1926-2018)
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Toril MoiDirector of PAL
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As I sat down to write this overview of last year’s activities at PAL, the message about Stanley Cavell’s death arrived. Stanley Cavell was one of the greatest American philosophers of the twentieth century. Without his pioneering work on the boundaries between literature, theater, film and philosophy PAL would not exist. In the fall of 2009, he came to Duke to give PAL’s inaugural lecture. His spirit has been with us ever since, not just in the many events we have devoted to ordinary language philosophy, and to Wittgenstein, but in all our events and workshops exploring the way different art forms think. And Stanley Cavell’s spirit also inspired our long-standing com-mitment to the initiatives and events that we gather under the rubric Writing Is Thinking. In the coming academic year, PAL will organize a number of event to honor Stanley Cavell’s memory.
2017-2018 saw both continuation and change at PAL. First the new: We inaugurated a new an-nual graduate student conference collaboration with the Philosophy and Literature Initiative at Stanford University. The conference is co-organized by graduate students from Duke and Stan-ford. In May 2018, Duke students went to Stanford. In Spring 2019, Stanford students will come to Duke. The collaboration was the brainchild of my colleagues Joshua Landy and R. Lanier Anderson at Stanford. We think graduate students in both places will benefit hugely from being exposed to our congenial, yet different intellectual styles. This initiative is in keeping with PAL’s
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efforts to be a community-building resource for graduate students in relevant fields at Duke, and to connect them with their peers elsewhere.
But we also continued two traditions that have been with us since the start. The 5th biannual Young Scholars Workshop focused on the question of character in literature, and featured two of the leading literary scholars in the US today, Rita Felski (UVa) and Amanda Anderson (Brown), and three specially invited graduate students: Hannah Haejin Kim (Stanford), Greg Chase (Bos-ton U.) and Jon Najarian (Boston U.). As usual the workshop filled up with students and faculty from across the disciplines. We also continued our explorations of writing, this time in collabora-tion with a Working Group sponsored by the English department. Our question for the year was: What can academics learn from non-fiction writers? The group’s inquiries culminated in a won-derful workshop with James Wood, head literary critic for The New Yorker, and Claire Messud, one of the US’s leading novelists today. We will continue work on writing in the coming years.
Finally, some excellent news. Thanks to the generosity of the Provost’s Office, PAL has been funded for another three years, until the Summer of 2021! As usual, we invite you to check PAL’s website dukepal.org and subscribe to our listserv [email protected] to find out what we are up to.
Toril MoiDirector of PAL
Introduction
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Annual Report2017-2018
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The Other: Interdisciplinary Explorations
David Palumbo-Liu Stanford University
Friday | September 8 | 2017 | 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.
How useful is the concept of the Other in the humanities today?
“Where do we stand when we name the other?” A lecture by David Palumbo-Liu
Duke Faculty Panel: miriam cooke (AMES)Ranjana Khanna (English & Literature)Priscilla Wald (English & Women’s Studies)David Wong (Philosophy)
Duke Graduate Student Reponses: Nora Nunn (English)Renée Ragin (Literature)Taylor Ross (Religion)Heather Wallace (Philosophy)
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PAL/FHI Mellon Seminar: The Other
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Embodiment, Embeddness, Kindness:Conditions of Reading and Living Together
in Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
Yi-Ping Ong Johns Hopkins University
Thursday | Sept 21 | 2017 | 4:30-6:30pm
How do we come to share an ethical outlook with others? Is it possible to teach ethics? What does it mean to live with others, when we do not (always) inhabit the same world? Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello engages these pro-found ethical questions in and through its very form.
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PAL/FHI Mellon Seminar: The Other
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Fall Kickoff: Graduate Student Happy Hour
Tuesday | Sep 12 | 2017 | 5pm
We began the year with drinks and hors d’oeuvres to announce PAL’s 2017-2018 offerings for graduate students, including our PAL Certificate Courses and the 2018 Young Scholars Workshop
PAL PapersTwo PAL Certificate Papers by
Duke Graduate StudentsThursday | Oct 19 | 2017 | 5pm
In Search of an Übersicht: Wittgenstein, Western Marxism, and the Future of Criticism
Justin MitchellEnglish
PAL Certificate Candidate
Skepticism and Knowledge in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Myles OldershawEnglish
PAL Certificate Candidate
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PAL for Graduate Students
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The Natural Method: Ethics, Mind, and Self
Themes from the work of Owen Flanagan
Sep 28-29 | 2017
This two-day conference celebrated the work of Owen Flanagan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and member of the PAL Steering Committee
Proudly Co-Sponsored by PAL
Also sponsored by the Duke Department of Philosophy; Trinity College of Arts and Sci-
ences; Center for Cognitive Neuroscince; Center for Comparative Philosophy; Kenan
Institute for Ethics; and MIT Press
ETHICS, MIND & SELF
SEPTEMBER 28-29, 2017
THE NATURAL METHOD
PATRICIA CHURCHLAND PEGGY DESAUTELSGILLIAN EINSTEIN GEORGE GRAHAMP. J. IVANHOE ROBERT N. MCCAULEYROBERT VAN GULICK DAVID WONG
THEMES FROM THE WORK OF OWEN FLANAGAN
ORGANIZED BYEDDY NAHMIAS THOMAS POLGER WENQING ZHAO
SPONSORED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, CENTER FOR COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, CENTER FOR PHILOSOPHY, ARTS AND LITERATURE, CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY, KENAN INSTITUTE FOR ETHICS, and THE MIT PRESS
philosophy.duke.eduCortical Sunburst, ©2013 Greg A. Dunn, used by permission
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Co-Sponsored Events
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Young Scholars Workshop 2018Character: Identification, Ethics, Ontology
with Amanda Anderson (Brown) and Rita Felski (University of Virginia)
March 22, 2018: Public Keynote Lectures
Thinking with Characters A lecture by Amanda Anderson
Identifying with Characters A lecture by Rita Felski
March 23, 2019: Closed Workshop for ParticipantsAfternoon workshops with Amanda Anderson and Rita Felski
Is There Any Point in Warning Literary Critics Against Treating Characters as if They Were Real People?A paper presentation by Toril MoiResponses from invited Young Scholars:Jon Najarian, Boston UniversityGreg Chase, Boston UniversityHannah Haejiin Kim, Stanford University
The workshop gathered 14 local scholars (faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students).
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Young Scholars Workshop
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Working Group
The English Department generously spon-sored a working group on “Writing and Aca-demic Work” for 2017/18, which met every 2-3 weeks. The working group spent the year reading and discussing non-academic texts in fields close to our own (literary criti-cism, philosophy, etc.), workshopping their own writing, and sponsoring a number of talks and workshops.
PAL co-sponsored the working group’s final event, with the leading critic James Wood of The New Yorker and Claire Messud, one of America’s foremost novelists.
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Write Now! On Fiction and Criticism
Claire Messud and James WoodApril 3-4 | 2018
April 3, 2018, 4:30pmReception and Public Readings
April 4, 2018, 12:00pmConversation with the Authors
Hosted by the Duke English Department, and co-sponsored by Humantities Futures Initiative @FHI, PAL, and So and So Books
Writing is Thinking 2017-18
Macchia versus Memory? Outlining Inner Images
Nicola Suthor Yale University
Monday | April 16 2018 | 6pm
Introduced by Neil McWilliam Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Art and Art History
Professor Suthor examined the generative processes of drawing practice in seven-teenth-century Europe through reference to Renaissance art theory and contemporary conceptions of the role of volition and the suspension of memory in the act of sketch-ing. The lecture centered on a close reading of a sketch by Rembrandt of Christ carrying the Cross (c. 1630) from the Kupferstichk-abinett in Berlin.
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Other Events
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Interiorities: Reflecting Subjectivity and SocialityApr 27-28 | 2018 | Stanford University
Sponsored by the Philosophy and Literature Initiative at Stanford and by the Center for Phi-losophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke University; organized by graduate students from Duke
University and Stanford University
Keynote Speakers: Yi-Ping Ong (Johns Hopkins)Karla Oeler (Stanford)
“Interiorities: Reflecting Subjectivity and Sociality” brought together doctoral students and scholars from both coasts to reflect on how social life conditions the formation, exposure, and expression of selfhood, while paying close attention to the irreducible features of sub-jective experience.
Duke Graduate Student Organizers:Kevin Spencer, English Robert Tate, EnglishDevin Buckley, English
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Duke-Stanford Annual Graduate Student Conference
Duke Graduate Student Participants:
Feeling as Moral Life: Coleridge’s Phenomenology of Affect in Aids to ReflectionDevin Buckley – English
J. M. Coetzee: Thinking Outside the Computational ModelJames Draney – English
’Learning to See’ the Image (Weltinnenraum): On Lyric Imagination and Phenomenology Interiority in Rilke’sThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids BriggeJohn Jolly – German
Endgames: Interiority and Communication Breakdown in Thomas Bernhard’s The Lime WorksChristoph Schmitz – German
Disowning Action in MacbethKevin Spencer – English
Ovidian Reflections amid Westworld’s Bicameral MindRobert Tate – English
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PAL Graduate Student CertificateThe PAL Graduate Certificate seeks to connect the study of specific works of art and specific art forms (e.g., literature, music, theater, painting, film) to questions concerning creativity, the nature of specific art forms, the relation-ship between knowledge and art, and between ethics and aesthetics. The Certificate aims to make students conversant with philosophical reflections on literature and the arts. The Certificate seeks to foster an understanding of the historical nature of different art forms, and of aesthetics and philoso-phy, and to encourage exploration of philosophy, art and literature from dif-ferent historical periods.
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PAL Graduate Student Certificate
Certificate Courses 2017-18
Fall 2017Comparative Modernism across the ArtsCorina Stan and Gabriel Richard
Wittgenstein and Literary TheoryToril Moi Film-philosophers/Film-makersMarkos Hadjioannou
Stimmung and Film AestheticsInga Pollmann (UNC)
Rilke and Phenomenology, 1900-1926Thomas Pfau
Spring 2018Shakespeare, Tragedy, EthicsSarah Beckwith
Opera: From Entertainment to Philoso-phyJacqueline Waeber
Ingeborg Löfgren (Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden) was a visiting scholar at Duke University’s Literature Program and PAL, September through November 2017. She earned her Ph.D. in Literature at Uppsala University in 2015, with a dissertation on skepti-cism and literary theory: Interpretive Skepticism: Stanley Cavell, New Criticism, and Literary Interpretation. Currently she is initiating a project on the literary philosophy of the Swedish activist and novelist Sara Lidman (1923-2004). In January 2018, she began a 3-year postdoc project at Uppsala University, entitled Con-Science and The Whole: Sara Lidman’s Literary Philosophy. Her research interests are modernism, ordinary language philosophy and criticism (OLP and OLC), interpretive theory, the intersection of philosophy and literature.
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Ingeborg LöfgrenDepartment of LiteratureUppsala University, Sweden
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PAL Visiting Scholars
Tobias Skiveren was a visiting scholar at PAL February through May 2018. He is a PhD-fellow at the Scandinavian Department, Aarhus University, Denmark. As a literary critic, he has writ-ten extensively on (contemporary) Danish literature and is part of a current wave of scholars trying to transfer new materialist philosophy, ecocriticism, and affect theory to the field of Danish literary criticism. His Ph.D.-project engages the methodological implications that arise when adopting new theoretical ideas of affect and materiality to the study of literature.
Tobias SkiverenPhD-fellow at the Scandinavian DepartmentAarhus University, Denmark
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PAL Steering Committee
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Sarah BeckwithProfessor of English and Theater Studies; Chair of Theater Studies
Owen FlanaganJames B. Duke Professor of Philosophy; Professor of Neurobiology
Neil McWilliamWalter H. Annenberg Pro-fessor of Art History
Toril MoiJames B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies; Professor of Philosophy, English and Theater studies
Thomas PfauAlice Mary Baldwin Profes-sor and Eads Family Profes-sor of English and German; DGS-German Studies
Jacqueline WaeberAssociate Professor of Music
PAL Steering Committee
PAL Graduate Students Assistants
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Heather WallaceAssociate Director
Filippo ScrepantiAssistant & Graphic Design
Matia GuardabascoPAL’s Staff Support in the English Department
PAL People
