ANNOUNCEMENTS
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3.16.10
"Philosophy and Literature in Conversation": Louis Menand (English, Harvard), Alison Simmons (Philosophy, Harvard). More...
3.15.10
Blakey Vermeule in conversation about her new book, Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? Discussants: Louis Menand (Harvard), Jonathan Kramnick (Rutgers). More...
2.24.10, 5:15-7:00 p.m.
Giovanni Ferrari (Berkeley), "Storytelling and Intimation: A Somewhat Gricean Account." More...
1.15-16.10 Film and Philosophy: a two-day event featuring Robert Pippin, George Wilson, David Thomson, and others.
1.8-1.15.2010 A series of events featuring George Pattison (Divinity, Oxford).
10.08.09 West Coast premiere of The Origin Cycle, a selection of texts from Darwin's Origin of Species set to music.
9.14.09 Welcome back!
9.01.09
This year's Capstone Seminars include for the first time a course on the taoist Chuang-Tsu. Details on all capstones here.
5.04.09
How can we be the poets of our lives? This was the topic of a recent episode of KQED's "Forum" with Michael Krasny. Click here for the archived episode.
2.1.09
The Re-Enchantment of the World, featuring essays by Lanier Anderson, Dan Edelstein, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Robert Harrison, Joshua Landy, Andrea Nightingale, and Michel Serres, came out this year. An episode of Robert Harrison's "Entitled Opinions" has been dedicated to the topic; click here for streaming.
What is so fascinating about works like Plato's dialogues and Dostoevsky's novels? Can philosophy and literature, in such combinations, achieve more than the sum of the two parts? Can philosophical approaches account for the specific power of literary works, even those that are not overtly philosophical? And can literary devices contribute to philosophical goals—in a way, perhaps, that nothing else could?
Founded in 2004, the initiative in Philosophy and Literature brings together Stanford’s vibrant group of literary scholars and its renowned philosophy department to answer questions like these. The initiative currently comprises a set of undergraduate major tracks, a graduate student workshop, and faculty-led events. Recent interests of participating faculty include:
- the nature and value of beauty
- literature and cognitive science
- literature and the limits of sense
- irony and ironism
- literature and self-fashioning
- intention and interpretation
- metaphor
- mimesis and make-believe
- non-semantic effects of literary texts
- literature and moral improvement
- styles and genres of philosophical writing
For representative writings and links by Stanford and non-Stanford writers alike, please browse our library. Here are a few books by affiliated Stanford authors:
