Date/Time
Friday, October 24, 2014–Saturday, October 25, 2014
9:30 am PDT
Location
UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
2520 Cimarron Street
—a conference organized by Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles, and Matthew Crow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
As discourses of individual conscience, rights, republicanism, commerce, scientific studies of society, the spread of print, and the flourishing of belles lettres took root in as well as challenged the authority of the classical curriculum, liberal learning became increasingly concerned with the wider cultivation of men and women of enlarged minds and liberal sentiment, capable of engaging and participating in the political cultures as well as the globalized societies of which they were both observers and members. This foregrounding of cultivation—of the question of the ideal human subject of the liberal arts—not only sits at the center of Enlightenment learning but also provides a critical opportunity for us to unpack and reconsider our own concepts and practices of interdisciplinary learning and its relationship to the public. The guiding spirit of this conference is the notion that the origins of modern liberal education as a broad institution in the long eighteenth century—with its emphasis on cultivating individuals for civic life—can help us think anew about the ethics appropriate for the student of the arts today.
What are the subjects of the liberal arts? Who are the subjects of the liberal arts? What makes the arts liberal? And finally, what does the liberal artist owe the past and the present? Using these four questions as guideposts, an assembly of leading scholars from across disciplines will address specific aspects of their own work with an eye toward the place of that work in the present, thus throwing into sharp relief the civic aspects of liberal learning. By the end of the conference, we will have begun exploring a deeper history of thought and expression in early modernity and in the present than we have done thus far. Just as important, rather than taking the place and importance of the liberal arts today as a given, we will confront head-on the question of the usefulness of our study. With this effort, a widely-assumed dichotomy in scholarship between practices of critical self-reflection and pragmatic, publically-relevant work of civic engagement may be shown to dissolve.
Speakers:
David Bromwich, Yale University
Matthew Crow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles
Peter Alexander Meyers, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Anahid Nersessian, University of California, Los Angeles
Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Virginia
Vivasvan Soni, Northwestern University
Johnson Kent Wright, Arizona State University
Program
Friday, October 24
9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration
10:00 a.m.
Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome
Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles, and
Matthew Crow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Opening Remarks
Session 1: Rhetoric and Formation
Chair: Saree Makdisi, University of California, Los Angeles
Anahid Nersessian, University of California, Los Angeles
“The Motive for Rhetoric”
Peter Alexander Meyers, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
“Civic Inquiry and the Incomplete Modernization of Rhetoric”
12:15 p.m.
Lunch
2:15 p.m.
Session 2: For Political Life
Chair: Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles
Vivasvan Soni, Northwestern University
“Can Aesthetics Overcome Instrumental Reason? The Need for Judgment in Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees”
Matthew Crow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
“Jefferson on Use and Recollection”
3:45 p.m.
Break
David Bromwich, Yale University
“The Rhetoric of Reform in the 1790s”
5:00 p.m.
Reception
Saturday, October 25
9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration
10:00 a.m.
Session 3: Between Past and Present
Chair: Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles
Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles
“The Last Amateur: Jonathan Swift, Edward Said, and the Profession of Literature”
Johnson Kent Wright, Arizona State University
“The Dialectic of ‘Enlightenment Studies’ from the Belle Epoque to the Current Conjuncture”
Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Virginia
“Philosophical History for Our Time”
1:00 p.m.
Conclusion