November 14, 2007, 5.00pm
Why Writers Love Venice
Kevin Newmark, Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literature, Boston College
Discussant: Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Professor of American Literature, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia
Prof. Newmark will explain how and why Venice became a literary topic in its own right, through the writings of leading authors, such as John Ruskin, Henry James, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust.
Kevin Newmark is currently teaching two courses in the Semester Program of the VIU School of Humanities and Social Sciences: The City as Metaphor: Why Writers Love Venice and How to Begin Thinking: some versions of Twentieth Century History, Philosophy, Literature and Theory. His areas of specialization are post-romantic poetry and prose, literary criticism and theory, philosophical approaches to literature and literary approaches to philosophy.
November 21, 2007, 5.00pm
Humans in the Age of Genetics and Computers
Victor Gomez Pin, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Universitat Autonòma Barcelona
Discussant: Claudio Bartocci, Professor of Mathematical Physics, University of Genoa
Victor Gomez Pin will argue that Humanism is facing an unprecedented challenge from both those who rely on the so-called "artificial intelligence" of machines for improving the human condition and those who end up denying, on the basis of genetic evidence, the radical singularity of our species
Victor Gomez Pin is currently teaching two courses in the Semester Program of the VIU School of Humanities and Social Sciences: Humanism in the Digital Age and Human Cyborgs and Robots. He is head of a research program on The Real and the Virtual from the point of view of Classical Philosophy, sponsored by the Consejo General de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica. His recent book "Entre Lobos y autómatas: la causa del hombre" won the Espasa Ensajo Prize 2006.
The lecture series is open to the public.
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