Professor of Philosophy Marianne Janack, recipient of the 2017-18 Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship, will present a three-part lecture series, beginning on March 5. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Janack was awarded the Romanell Professorship for her proposed lecture series on the alleged uselessness of philosophy, its literary possibilities and its shifting history. She plans to explore the following in the series titled Metaphilosophical Investigations:
“The Charges against Philosophy: Irrelevance, Skepticism, Abstraction”
Are the charges warranted? A discussion of Wittgenstein, science, knowledge, and questions
Monday, March 5, 7 p.m., Dwight Lounge, Bristol Center
“Philosophy as Literature/ Literature as Philosophy: The cases of Simone de Beauvoir, Wittgenstein, and David Foster Wallace”
Tuesday, April 10, 4:15 p.m., Dwight Lounge, Bristol Center
“Loneliness, Escape, Entertainment, and Writing: Why do we read? Why do we write?”
Friday, August 31, 4:15 p.m., location TBD
The Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship is awarded annually to scholars in the field of philosophy, without restriction to any one school of philosophical thought. The professorship recognizes not only distinguished achievement but also the recipient’s contribution or potential contribution to public understanding of philosophy.
