Ihab Hassan Seminar 2012

The Humanities Ascending: Or What's In It For You 

Ihab Hassan Presenting His Paper

Abstract:The talk reviews the various challenges--some self-made--to the humanities in the digital age and proposes to found them in an unconventional idea of cultural and linguistic trust.  To this idea, the kenotic principle of self-dispossession is particularly relevant.  Shakespeare, Pascal, Emily Dickinson, Nietzsche, William James, Rorty, and Harold Bloom are among the authors cited.

Bio:Ihab Hassan was born in Cairo, Egypt and emigrated to the United States in 1946. Currently he is Emeritus Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His writings include Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (1961), The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett (1967), The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971, 1982), Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Times (1975), The Right Promethean Fire: Imagination, Science, and Cultural Change (1980), The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (1987), Selves at Risk: Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letters (1990), and Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades (1995), as well as two memoirs, Out of Egypt: Scenes and Arguments of an Autobiography (1985) and Between the Eagle and the Sun: Traces of Japan (1996). Recently, he has published many short stories in various literary magazines and is completing a novel, The Changeling. His most recent work is In Quest of Nothing: Selected Essays, 1998-2008 (2010). In addition, he has written more than 300 essays and reviews on literary and cultural subjects.

Audio: Listen to Ihab's paper (right click and "save link as" to download).

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