Technology and Immortality

[marcel]

Greetings.

The UW Critical Media Lab and the Department of Psychology are pleased  
to invite you to an animated lecture by Sheldon Solomon, Professor of  
Psychology and the Courtney and Steven Ross Professor of  
Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore College. Solomon is one of the  
founders of Terror Management Theory (TMT), which posits that human  
behaviour and the formation of human cultures are rooted in our  
universal denial of death. As the cultural anthropologist Ernest  
Becker once put it, humans are the only creatures whose sole purpose  
is to deny their creatureliness, which includes their mortality.  
Becker's convincing arguments earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for  
his book _Denial of Death_. More recently, by applying Becker's  
theories of death denial to experiments in social psychology, Terror  
Management Theorists have generated over 300 distinct studies that  
investigate how human motivation may be rooted in the denial of death  
and the quest for immortality. Such studies are being conducted here  
at UW in the departments of Psychology and perhaps surprisingly in  
English, in the context of technology and rhetorics of immortality.

Solomon is an extremely engaging and energetic speaker, known for his  
tie-dyed shirts, rapid-fire delivery, and broad interdisciplinary  
range. He was featured in the film _Flight from Death: The Quest for  
Immortality_, which will be screened at the Critical Media Lab as a  
"warm-up" for the lecture. The screening will be followed by an  
informal discussion on the topic of "Technology and Immortality."

FILM SCREENING
_Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality_ (2006, 85 min.)
Tuesday, December 1, 7:30 pm
Critical Media Lab
191 King Street West, directly across from Kitchener City Hall

LECTURE
Sheldon Solomon, "Teach These Souls to Fly: The Psychological Function  
of Supernatural Beliefs"
Friday, December 4, Arts Lecture Hall 124

The video linked below will give you a good idea of Solomon's "ethos":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS8DnYwnnF4

And here is Solomon (actually wearing a tie) explaining TMT:
http://revver.com/video/13408/terror-management-theory-defined/

Web site for _Flight From Death_ film:
http://www.flightfromdeath.com/

We hope to see you at either or both of these events, which are  
guaranteed to provoke and stimulate.

----
Professor Marcel O'Gorman, PhD
Director, Critical Media Lab
Department of English
University of Waterloo
Hagey Hall
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x32946
Fax: 519 746 5788
http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca
http://marcelogorman.net



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