ACLS Fellows' Publications

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction by Eckart Förster F'85 now available from Harvard University Press.

Kant declared that philosophy began in 1781 with his Critique of Pure Reason. In 1806 Hegel announced that philosophy had now been completed. Eckart Förster examines the reasons behind these claims and assesses the steps that led in such a short time from Kant’s “beginning” to Hegel’s “end.” He concludes that, in an unexpected yet significant sense, both Kant and Hegel were indeed right.

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy follows the unfolding of a key idea during this exceptionally productive period: the Kantian idea that philosophy can be scientific and, consequently, can be completed. Förster’s study combines historical research with philosophical insight and leads him to propose a new thesis. The development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy in his three Critiques, Förster claims, resulted in a fundamental distinction between “intellectual intuition” and “intuitive understanding.” Overlooked until now, this distinction yields two takes on how to pursue philosophy as science after Kant. One line of thought culminates in Fichte’s theory of freedom (Wissenschaftslehre), while the other—and here Förster brings Goethe’s significance to the fore—results in Goethe’s transformation of the Kantian idea of an intuitive understanding in light of Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge. Both strands are brought together in Hegel and propel his split from Schelling.

Förster’s work makes an original contribution to our understanding of the classical era of German philosophy—an expanding interest within the Anglophone philosophical community.

(Source: hup.harvard.edu)

After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future edited by Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman G'78, and James Phelan now available from Ohio State University Press.

After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future collects sixteen essays written with the awareness that we are on the verge of a historical shift in our relation to the Third Reich’s programmatic genocide. Soon there will be no living survivors of the Holocaust, and therefore people not directly connected to the event must assume the full responsibility for representing it. The contributors believe that this shift has broad consequences for narratives of the Holocaust. By virtue of being “after” the accounts of survivors, storytellers must find their own ways of coming to terms with the historical reality that those testimonies have tried to communicate. The ethical and aesthetic dimensions of these stories will be especially crucial to their effectiveness. Guided by these principles and employing the tools of contemporary narrative theory, the contributors analyze a wide range of Holocaust narratives—fictional and nonfictional, literary and filmic—for the dual purpose of offering fresh insights and identifying issues and strategies likely to be significant in the future. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Anniken Greve, Jeremy Hawthorn, Marianne Hirsch, Irene Kacandes, Phillipe Mesnard, J. Hillis Miller, Michael Rothberg, Beatrice Sandberg, Anette H. Storeide, Anne Thelle, and Janet Walker.

(Source: osupress.blogspot.com)

Reading T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets and the Journey toward Understanding by G. Douglas Atkins G'77 now available from Palgrave Macmillan.

This book offers an exciting new approach to T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets through both a close reading and a comparison to Eliot’s other works, notably the poems The Waste Land, “The Hollow Men”, and Ash-Wednesday. G. Douglas Atkins reveals that in Four Quartets, incarnation is the universal, timeless pattern in Eliot’s work.

(Source: palgrave.com)

Language: The Cultural Tool by Daniel L. Everett F'84 now available from Pantheon.

For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

(Source: randomhouse.com)

Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France by Raymond Birn G'63 now available from Stanford University Press.

Today, we are inclined to believe that intellectual freedom has no greater adversary than the censor. In eighteenth-century France, the matter was more complicated. Royal censors envisioned themselves not as fulfilling a mission of state-sponsored repression but rather as guiding the literary traffic of the Enlightenment. By awarding pre-publication and pre-distribution approvals, royal censors sought to insulate authors and publishers from the scandal of post-publication condemnation by parliaments, the police, or the Church. Less official authorizations were also awarded. Though censors did delete words and phrases from manuscripts and sometimes rejected manuscripts altogether, the liberal use of tacit permissions and conditional approvals resulted in the publication and circulation of books that, under a less flexible system, might never have seen the light of day. In essence, eighteenth-century French censors served as cultural intermediaries who bore responsibility for expanding public awareness of the progressive thought of their time.

(Source: sup.org)

ACLS Society News. The Medieval Academy of America begins its Annual Meeting today at Saint Louis University. This year’s meeting will feature fifty sessions from a wide range of disciplines and approaches. ACLS Fellow Caroline A. Bruzelius will deliver the opening address, “Inside/Outside: Friars and the Dynamics of Urban Space.”

(Source: medievalacademy.org)

Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe edited by Karen Fresco and Anne D. Hedeman F'86, G'85 now available from the Ohio State University Press.

The fourteen essays that comprise Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe interrogate questions posed by French, Flemish, English, and Italian collections of all sorts—libraries as a whole, anthologies and miscellanies assembled within a single manuscript or printed book, and even illustrated ivory boxes. Collections in Context demonstrates that the very act of collecting inevitably imposes some kind of relationship among what might otherwise be naively thought of as disparate elements and simultaneously exposes something about the community that created and used the collection. Thus, Collections in Context offers unusual insights into how collecting both produced knowledge and built community in early modern Europe.

(Source: osupress.blogspot.com)

ACLS Society News. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies begins its annual conference today in Boston. The Society’s annual conference provides a forum for scholars and teachers of film and media studies to present and hear new research; to provide a supportive environment for networking, mentoring, and collaboration among scholars otherwise separated by distance, language, or disciplinary boundaries; and to promote the field of cinema and media studies among its practitioners, to other disciplines, and to the public at large, in part through public recognition of award worthy achievements and other significant milestones within the field.

Follow @SCMSconference and #SCMS12.

(Source: cmstudies.org)

Reinventing Childhood After World War II edited by Paula S. Fass and Michael Grossberg F'05, F'87 now available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Many social and political developments since the end of the World War II have fundamentally altered the lives children lead and are now beginning to transform conceptions of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II brings together seven prominent historians of modern childhood to identify precisely what has changed in children’s lives and why. Topics range from youth culture to children’s rights; from changing definitions of age to nontraditional families; from parenting styles to how American experiences compare with those of the rest of the Western world. Taken together, the essays argue that children’s experiences have changed in such dramatic and important ways since 1945 that parents, other adults, and girls and boys themselves have had to reinvent almost every aspect of childhood.

Reinventing Childhood After World War II presents a striking interpretation of the nature and status of childhood that will be essential to students and scholars of childhood, as well as policy makers, educators, parents, and all those concerned with the lives of children in the world today.

(Source: upenn.edu)

Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects edited by Margaret M. Weir F'88 now available from the Brookings Institution Press.

The mission of the Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects series is to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing the key social and economic problems facing today’s cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. Volume four of the series introduces and examines thoroughly the concept of regional resilience, explaining how resilience can be promoted—or impeded—by regional characteristics and public policies. The authors illuminate how the walls that now segment metropolitan regions across political jurisdictions and across institutions—and the gaps that separate federal laws from regional realities—have to be bridged in order for regions to cultivate resilience.

(Source: brookings.edu)