rhetoric, writing, and technology

The Human and the Humanities

This past weekend I made it down to Raleigh, NC to the Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human and the Humanities conference sponsored by the National Humanities Center in the Research Triangle. The center hosts fellowships for researchers in the humanities, puts on public lectures by the fellows, and hosts this conference, which is the last conference over a three year span that investigates these issues.

It was an interesting mix of a variety of academics and a public of humanities patrons that promote and follow the center. The topic brought together scientists and humanists to talk about current perspectives on the human. Though posthumanism didn’t get invoked very often explicitly in the talks, it was the clear undercurrent. I really liked the talks on current scientific studies being done from genetics to psychology. They really added further support for the ways I’m thinking about posthumanism right now. A few of the humanities presenters still sounded too much like traditional humanists for me, but I guess that is to be expected from a Humanities Center. Hopefully I can post more detailed notes in the future on particular speakers/sessions. Here’s the participant breakdown:

• Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
• Patricia Churchland, University of California, San Diego
• Michael Gazzaniga, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Michael Gillespie, Duke University
• Katherine Hayles, Duke University
• David Krakauer, Santa Fe Institute
• Jesse Prinz, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Peter Railton, University of Michigan
• Oliver Sacks, Columbia University
• Robert Sapolsky, Stanford University
• Raymond Tallis, University of Manchester
• Holden Thorp, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University

 

Posted by: bhawk at 17:35 | link | comments
whatever, posthuman