Events

Archives of the Present: Mayank Austen Soofi and Dayanita Singh in conversation (Introduced by Anna Gerotto) 1024 768 Barbara Del Mercato

Archives of the Present: Mayank Austen Soofi and Dayanita Singh in conversation (Introduced by Anna Gerotto)

A new event from the cultural program organized around Edmund de Waal’s exhibition “psalm” (May 8th-Sept 29th, 2019)

Venice, 22/05/2019 at 5.30 p.m. Ca’ Bottacin (Dorsoduro 3911)

Archives of the Present: Introducing the Mayank Austen Soofi Archive

Dayanita Singh and Mayank Austen Soofi in conversation

Introduced by Anna Gerotto

 Mayank Austen Soofi is a writer, blogger, journalist and photographer based in Delhi, India. For more than a decade he has been creating stories and images out of the megacity. Artist Dayanita Singh calls him the “Chief Archivist of Delhi”. Mayank Austen Soofi is now organi­sing his ongoing work, a literary and artistic form in itself, into a massive online archive.

In the garden of Ca’ Bottacin from 4.30 to 7.30: “Somewhere in Delhi collection – Prints on Khadi”, a project by Anna Gerotto based on Mayank Austen Soofi’s photos.

 Please find here the complete cultural program organised around Edmund de Waal’s psalm.

Learn more about psalm here

May 22, 2019 at 5.30pm

Ca’ Bottacin, Dorsoduro 3911, Venice

The event is in English

No booking is required

Programma culturale in concomitanza di “psalm” di Edmund de Waal 1001 1024 Barbara Del Mercato

Programma culturale in concomitanza di “psalm” di Edmund de Waal

Il Center for the Humanities and Social Change dell’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia collabora con Edmund de Waal organizzando un ricco programma di eventi culturali che accompagneranno la mostra “psalm” (Venezia, 8 maggio-29 settembre 2019)

Il Center for the Humanities and Social Change dell’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia è partner ufficiale di un importantissimo evento artistico che si apre l’8 maggio a Venezia. L’artista e scrittore inglese Edmund de Waal, famoso a livello mondiale come ceramista e autore del best seller Un’eredità di avorio e ambra porta a Venezia in anteprima mondiale una doppia installazione intitolata “psalm” (salmo), destinata a girare poi nei più prestigiosi musei del mondo.
Presso l’Ateneo Veneto de Waal ha costruito la “Biblioteca dell’esilio”, una struttura temporanea rivestita in porcellana liquida applicata su foglia d’oro, che ospiterà quasi 2000 volumi di autori che hanno vissuto l’esperienza dell’esilio, da Ovidio ai giorni nostri.
Edmun de Waal ha scelto Ca’ Foscari per l’organizzazione di un ricco programma culturale legato ai temi della mostra: l’esilio, la persecuzione degli scrittori, l’importanza della parola. Da Maggio fino al 29 settembre gli spazi della mostra e la sede del Center for the Humanities and Social Change a Ca’ Bottacin si animeranno con letture, performance, conferenze, seminari, concerti, documentari e altro ancora. Tra gli ospiti più prestigiosi citiamo Ben Okri, Stefano Bartezzaghi, Benedetta Tobagi, Haim Baharier, Philippe Sands, André Aciman Eva Hoffman, Mary Hoffman, Dayanita Singh, Noo Saro Wiwa, David Grossman e lo stesso Edmund de Waal.
 
Il programma completo è disponibile qui
 
Periodo di apertura della mostra “psalm”
8 maggio – 29 settembre 2019
Il sito della mostra:  www.psalmvenice.org
Sedi della mostra:
San Marco, 1897 –  Campo San Fantin
30124 Venezia
Campo del Ghetto Nuovo
Venezia
A Defense of Reading at the End of the World 795 1024 Tom Carlson

A Defense of Reading at the End of the World

May 13, 2019 at 2:30 p.m.

Robertson Gymnasium 1000A

In 1936, Wallace Stevens argued for the need for a poetic response to the crises of his age, writing that “[t]he poet who wishes to contemplate the good in the midst of confusion is like the mystic who wishes to contemplate God in the midst of evil.” And what of the prosaic academic who wishes to read literature in the midst of our contemporary crises? In my talk I will present a theory of literature and reading as a mode of knowing the (normative, narrative, and historical) conditions of our humanity, based on Michael Polanyi’s work on tacit knowledge and his conception of reality as the condition of inquiry and discovery. I then invite seminar participants to collaborate in putting this theory into practice with a consideration of Robert Lowell’s apocalyptic 1946 poem “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.”

Reading

Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Ch. 1 (“Tacit Knowing”), pp. 1-26.
Robert Lowell, “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.”

Recommended

Michael Polanyi, “Meaning” Lectures 1 (“From Perception to Metaphor“) and 2 (“Works of Art“).

Lindsay Atnip is a PhD candidate in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her recently-submitted dissertation is entitled “From Tragic Form to Apocalyptic Reality in Four American Works: Toward an Epistemological Theory and Practice of Reading.” She also teaches in the University of Chicago Graham School’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.

Lee Bontecou, Sixth Stone I, 1964. Color lithograph on paper, 93 x 71.

Opening of the “psalm” cultural program: Ben Okri and Edmund de Waal 1024 899 Barbara Del Mercato

Opening of the “psalm” cultural program: Ben Okri and Edmund de Waal

The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change collaborates with Edmund de Waal organising a rich cultural program around his exhibition “psalm” (May 8th-Sept 29th, 2019)

Venice, 10/05/2019 at 5 p.m.

May 10th, at 5 p.m. Edmund de Waal and Ben Okri present The Library of Exile, a fascinating project based in the Aula Magna of Ateneo Veneto and part of a larger exhibition which is on display also at the Jewish Museum of Venice.

Full program here

Booking is essential: bookings@psalmvenice.org

Learn more about psalm here

Republics and Republicanism: Theory and Practice. Heritage / Present and Future Perspectives 910 720 Barbara Del Mercato

Republics and Republicanism: Theory and Practice. Heritage / Present and Future Perspectives

The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change supports this conference on “Republics and Republicanism” organized by the Venice International University: 

Venice (San Servolo), 3-5/05/2019 

The aim of the conference is to discuss Republicanism in a broad, multidisciplinary and worldwide perspective, and to initiate a series of such meetings to be held in Venice every two years.

During recent decades, Republicanism has become a central concern in political theory and history. This body of thought emerged as the main alternative to Liberalism, when Marxism lost this role after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is a renewed interest today, while searching for solutions to mounting populism and personalization of power; the issue of inequality and the crisis of democracies….

Continue reading on conference website

Venice International University

Isola di San Servolo
30133 Venice,
Italy


phone: +39 041 2719511
fax:+39 041 2719510
email: viu@univiu.org

The event is in English

Admission free

Dummy Image
Joan C. Tronto – Caring democratically: A response to neopopulism 724 1024 Barbara Del Mercato

Joan C. Tronto – Caring democratically: A response to neopopulism

The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change presents:  Joan C. Tronto (Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota) – Caring democratically: A response to neopopulism. Chair: Giulia Garofalo Geymonat, Discussant: Beatrice Gusmano

Venice, 13/05/2019 at 11 a.m.

Recent neopopulist ideas have gripped democracies around the globe. They have brought with them new forms of tribalism, hatreds of outgrips (religious groups and migrants) anti-feminist and anti-women regressive policies. But to defeat these powerful forces requires a proper analysis of their attraction. First, we need to understand that neopopulism is a reaction to neoliberalism and the damage it has wrought. Neopopulism, while reactionary and nostalgic for an imagined past, also contains a *discourse of care *that explains its appeal. This discourse of care is paternalistic and rests on fear of imagined, threatening, others. Defeating neopopulism requires more than a critique of neoliberal economics, it also requires addressing specifically the racist/ xenophobic and masculinist appeals of neopopulism. A democratic care ethics provides a convincing way to address these concerns.

prof. Joan Tronto teaches at the University of Minnesota.

“‘It is important to realize that we are receivers as well as givers of care, acted upon as well as agents. This is a difficult position to understand politically, but strength and human cooperation can arise from our recognition of our mutual interdependence.” J. Tronto

Aula Magna Silvio Trentin
Ca’ Dolfin (map)
Dorsoduro 3825/D, 30123 Venezia

The event is in English

Admission free

HSC Venice Lecture Series: Michael Taussig 655 491 Barbara Del Mercato

HSC Venice Lecture Series: Michael Taussig

Michael Taussig

with Franca Tamisari and Valentina Bonifacio

Monday April 15th

5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Aula B Ca’ Bottacin, Dorsoduro 3911, Venice

Michael Taussig

in conversation with Franca Tamisari and Valentina Bonifacio

Presents November, by Berlin-based artist Hito Steyerl, (Germany 2004, DV, 25min).

This short film is both a hommage to Steyerl’s Kurdish friend Andrea Wolf, killed at 18 in a battle against the Turkish state, and a reflection on popular film, on feminism and revolution.

This event is in English.

In collaboration with the Department of Humanities

Michael Taussig, Adjunct professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, is an Australian anthropologist, born in Sidney of German and Czech/Jewish ancestral parents. He earned a medical degree from the University of Sidney, received his PhD. in anthropology from the London School of Economics and is a professor at Columbia University. Although he has published on medical anthropology, he is best known for his engagement with Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism, especially in terms of the work of Walter Benjamin.

Hito Steyerl, November, 2004
The Future of Artificial Intelligence: Language, Gender, Technology 724 1024 Stefanie Ullmann

The Future of Artificial Intelligence: Language, Gender, Technology

A report of the event as well as videos of the talks can be found here.

The workshop will consider the social impact of Artificially Intelligent Communications Technology (AICT). Specifically, the talks and discussions will focus on different aspects of the complex relationships between language, gender, and technology. These issues are of particular relevance in an age when Virtual Personal Assistants such as Siri, Cortana, and Alexa present themselves as submissive females, when most language-based technologies manifest glaring gender-biases, when 78% of the experts developing AI systems are male, when sexist hate speech online is a widely-recognised problem and when many Western cultures and societies are increasingly recognising the significance of non-binary gender identities.

Speakers

Professor Alison AdamSheffield Hallam University

Dr Heather BurnettCNRS-Université Paris Diderot

Dr Dirk HovyBocconi University

Dr Dong NguyenAlan Turing Institute, University of Utrecht

Dr Ruth PageUniversity of Birmingham

Dr Stefanie UllmannUniversity of Cambridge

The workshop is organised by Giving Voice to Digital Democracies: The Social Impact of Artificially Intelligent Communications Technology, a research project which is part of the Centre for the Humanities and Social Change, Cambridge and funded by the Humanities and Social Change International Foundation.

Giving Voice to Digital Democracies explores the social impact of Artificially Intelligent Communications Technology – that is, AI systems that use speech recognition, speech synthesis, dialogue modelling, machine translation, natural language processing, and/or smart telecommunications as interfaces. Due to recent advances in machine learning, these technologies are already rapidly transforming our modern digital democracies. While they can certainly have a positive impact on society (e.g. by promoting free speech and political engagement), they also offer opportunities for distortion and deception. Unbalanced data sets can reinforce problematical social biases; automated Twitter bots can drastically increase the spread of malinformation and hate speech online; and the responses of automated Virtual Personal Assistants during conversations about sensitive topics (e.g. suicidal tendencies, religion, sexual identity) can have serious consequences.

Responding to these increasingly urgent concerns, this project brings together experts from linguistics, philosophy, speech technology, computer science, psychology, sociology and political theory to develop design objectives for the creation of AICT systems that are more ethical, trustworthy and transparent. These technologies will have the potential to affect more positively the kinds of social change that will shape modern digital democracies in the immediate future.

Please register for the workshop here.

Queries: Una Yeung (uy202@cam.ac.uk

Image by metamorworks/Shutterstock.com

The Ethics of Powerlessness 700 525 Tom Carlson

The Ethics of Powerlessness

Keynote Presentations

Tuesday, April 16
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 4 pm

The Idea of the Theological Virtues   
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

The doctrine of the theological virtues holds that faith, hope and love are virtues of a special kind. Being divine gifts, and directed towards our supernatural telos, these virtues differ in kind from those on the classical lists, not least the ones Aquinas called ‘cardinal’. This doctrine gives rise to a dilemma. Either the theological virtues are capable of being cultivated through human agency, in which case they do not in this respect differ in kind from those on the classical lists – or they are incapable of being cultivated through human agency, in which case they are not really human virtues. In this paper, I chart possible responses to this dilemma and advance what I call a non-theological solution to the problem it articulates. Developing Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of ‘virtues of acknowledged dependence’, I argue that there is a cogent way of thinking of faith, hope and love as virtues of a kind, without recourse to Aquinas’ views about human teleology or to any special theory of divine agency. On the approach I develop, faith, hope and love are virtues of a kind because of the way in which they express the distinctive stance involved in owning up to our human dependence and vulnerability. My overall aim is to show that ethicists still have much to learn from the idea of the theological virtues, even if they do not accept the Thomistic framework in which this idea is traditionally advanced.

Wednesday, April 17
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 10 am

Love’s Telos: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Preferential Love    
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

Kierkegaard’s Works of Love is often associated with a harshly dismissive stance toward ordinary human love, as measured against an ascetic ideal of pure, Christian, non-preferential love. Despite a number of recent attempts to give it a sympathetic hearing, the worry persists that this text denigrates most what we ordinarily call love in ways that are extreme and implausible. My own view is that, on a standard, moralizing reading of Works of Love, this sort of complaint cannot be adequately answered. However, I believe that the moralizing reading misconstrues the overall structure of Kierkegaard’s critique and misses its internal character. My main aim in this paper is therefore to clarify the structure of Kierkegaard’s argument and to develop an alternative interpretative framework. While I shall not try here to offer a full defense of the standpoint of Works of Love, I do hope to indicate why stock criticisms miss their target and how this text offers a cogent overall contribution to the philosophy of love.

Presentations by Humanities & Social Change Postdoctoral Fellows

Wednesday, April 17
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 2-5 pm

The Problem of Inherited Guilt in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or
Simon Thornton

Autonomy, Authenticity, and Alterity
Martijn Buijs

Thursday, April 18
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 9-12 pm

A Leftist Turns from Marxism to the Poem: On the Soul’s Relationship to Form
Saleem Al-Bahloly

The Lament in Songs and Narratives of Slavery in the Romantic Archive
Catherene Ngoh

Some Concluding Reflections on Powerlessness

Thursday, April 18
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 2-5 pm

Watchfulness as a Virtue: Christian and Secular Perspectives
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

Daniel Watts is Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, and co-investigator on “The Ethics of Powerlessness” project. His work focuses on Søren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the phenomenological tradition. Author of numerous articles on Kierkegaard, he is currently working on a book titled, Thinking Humanly: Kierkegaard on Subjectivity and Thought.

Maja Lunde at Incroci di civiltà Festival in Venice 800 800 Barbara Del Mercato

Maja Lunde at Incroci di civiltà Festival in Venice

The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change supports the presence of  Maja Lunde at the literary festival Incroci di civiltà

Venice, 06/04/2019 at 2.00 p.m. 

Ocean Space, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Campo San Lorenzo, Venice

Born in 1975, Maja Lunde lives in Oslo with her husband and their three children. A novelist and TV-screenplay writer, after numerous children’s books she became internationally known with her first novel The History of Bees (2015), which has been published in 32 countries. An international best-seller, The History of Bees won the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize, becoming the first debut novel to receive the prize. Blue (2017) is the second book of the anticipated tetralogy on climate change.

(from the page of Incroci di civiltà. See full program here)

Maja Lunde will converse with

Sara Culeddu — Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

Boris Ondreička — TBA21-Academy

Bibliography in Italian

La storia dell’acqua, trad. di Giovanna Paterniti, Marsilio, 2018;

La storia delle api, trad. di Giovanna Paterniti, Marsilio, 2017.

The conversation will be English (simultaneous translation available); free admission, booking required.

This event is sponsored by Center for the Humanities and Social Change, NORLA – Norwegian Literature Abroad, TBA21-Academy and Marsilio

In collaboration with Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati

Maja Lunde