Video / Audio

Shaw, Our Contemporary? George Bernard Shaw was the most famous Irishman in the world for much of his life – yet, for many, the prodigious nature and quality of his output is forgotten. As well as being a prolific writer and polymath, he was one of the first global celebrities who carefully created and managed his brand. With his passionate interest in social justice and poverty, in human rights, in public discourse and in entertainment, he was a man with much to say to our times. Join us for a panel discussion where academics, archivists, publishers, theatre makers debate the relevance of Shaw today on stage, in the classroom and in print. Speakers: Catriona Crowe, Ruth Hegarty, Barry Houlihan, Lucy McDiarmid, Adrian Paterson, and Keri Walsh.

This talk traces a genealogy of affect theory from the early modern era through to the present day, establishing the central significance of music for this history. It demonstrates that the theory of affect we have inherited today has its origins in eighteenth-century aesthetic debates concerning music’s capacity to function as a sign and to move its listeners. In the early modern era, the affects were important components of an elaborate semiotic system that sought to explain the impact of art. Today, by stark contrast, affect is often explicitly opposed to theories of the sign and of representation; theorists describe affect as corporeal and immediate, working on our autonomic systems. The genealogy elaborated in this paper shows how affect theories became separated from theories of representation, and it illustrates the central and surprising role that music played in this separation.

In two recent novels, Kamila Shamsie and Colm Tóibín recreate classical mythology to address contemporary audiences and transnational subjects. Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire brings the story of Antigone to the contemporary British Pakistani community, while Colm Tóibín's House of Names re-imagines the Agamemnon tragedy from the points of view of Clytemnestra and Electra. These two authors will join each other in conversation to discuss their modern adaptations of these Greek classics and to explore why these heroines continue to haunt writers and readers today. Chris Morash moderates the discussion.

Celebrating Recent Work by Rebecca Woods, Matthew Jones, and William Deringer

Richard Prum, author of The Evolution of Beauty discusses his book, its implications and its problems, with the philosopher Philip Kitcher, the historian of science Deborah R. Coen, and the literary scholar George Levine. Prum's book, listed by the New York Times as one of the best of 2017, attempts to restore Darwin's theory of sexual selection, not only explaining through Prum's own original work in ornithology how it works, but also making a powerful case for the explanatory inadequacy of the popular "Darwinian" adaptationist paradigm in evolutionary biology. Sexual selection, particularly mate choice, Prum argues, accounts not only for the gorgeous plumage of male birds, but also for the splitting of humans from their simian cousins. Working independently of and often in conflict with natural selection, sexual selection leads us to a new definition and understanding of aesthetics. Perhaps even more strikingly, it leads Prum to a very strong feminist theory, with intellectually revolutionary implications.

New Books in the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University: a podcast featuring audio from the New Books Series at Columbia University and interviews with the speakers and authors. This podcast features A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia by Manan Ahmed.

New Books in the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University: a podcast featuring audio from the New Books Series at Columbia University and interviews with the speakers and authors. This podcast features Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 30th Anniversary Edition, with a New Afterword by Lila Abu-Lughod & Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism by Elizabeth Povinelli.  

New Books in the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University: a podcast featuring audio from the New Books Series at Columbia University and interviews with the speakers and authors. This podcast features Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett.