There are two upcoming lectures from notable scholars hosted by the Department of History, Department of English, and the Department of Art History.
On November 7 at 5:30 p.m. in 204 Kirkbride Hall, Catherine Gallagher, the Emerita Eggers professor of English Literature at University of California, Berkeley will present her lecture "Why We Tell it Like it Wasn't: The Facts about Historical Counterfactuals." Gallagher's lecture will explore the "what ifs" of historical narratives through examining counterfactual histories as objects of dispassionate study.
Gallagher's book, Nobody's Story, won the MLA's James Russell Lowell Prize for an outstanding literary study, and the American Philosophical Society awarded her 2018 book, Telling It Like It Wasn't: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Literature, the Jaques Barzun Prize for the year's best book in cultural history.
On November 8 at 5:30 p.m. in 204 Kirkbride Hall, Martin Jay, the Sidney Hellman Eherman professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, will present "Sublime Historical Experience, Real Presence and Photography." Martin will examine the ways in which certain photographs may provide what Dutch philosopher Frank Ankersmit termed "sublime historical experiences."
Martin Jay is the author of several books, most recent of which are Essays from the Edge: Parerga and Paralipomena and Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory. Jay will also present a graduate seminar titled "Visuality and Aesthetics" on November 8 at 12:30 p.m. in 211 Old College Hall. The seminar is by registration only. Please contact global-aesthetics@udel.edu.
These events are sponsored by the UniDel Foundation Inc., The University of Delaware's Departments of English, History, and Art History, the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies, the European Studies Program, and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.
