Lecture Series - Cultural Encounters / Encountering Cultures. Now with Podcasts!

[James M. Skidmore]

Cultural Encounters / Encountering Cultures

 

A series of ten public lectures by members of the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Waterloo

Winter Term 2010 - Mondays at 4:30pm - Arts Lecture Hall Room 113

 

Join your Faculty of Arts colleagues as they explore the interaction of
societies and cultures. 


Upcoming lecture:  Monday 1 February 2009, 4:30pm, Arts Lecture Hall Room
113
David John (Germanic and Slavic Studies):  
The Legend of Faust as a Mirror of European Culture and an Example of
Cultural Transfer
 "Faust" is a name likely familiar to anyone in western culture who has
enjoyed a broad education, even if their sense of the person to whom it
refers may be vague. The figure has been prominent in many artistic forms
for centuries, the graphic arts, music, opera, drama, prose, musicals, rock
operas, and even comics. Central to Faust depictions is always the story of
a man, occasionally a woman, who questions the fundamental meaning of life
and strives to make sense of it. Yet Faust was also an historical person who
lived in Renaissance Germany about the time of the Protestant Reformation.
The representations of his life and ambitions that have come down to our own
time are hence a mixture of fact, legend, and fantasy which continues to
fascinate and offer meaning for a wide variety of people.
With many visual examples, the lecture will trace the tale of Faust from its
Germanic beginnings and connections to European humanistic thought
(Marlowe's drama in England, folk legends in Germany), to its artistic high
point in the form of a two-part tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
written in Germany between 1780 and 1832. Using examples of its staging in
many cultures, including German, American, Canadian, Chinese, Egyptian,
Filipino, Indian, Japanese, and others, it will show how Faust's original
predicament expanded to become a timeless and intercultural investigation
into the human comedy.


Podcasts

After the lectures I conduct an interview with each presenters.  These
conversations are available as online podcasts - it's like CBC Radio One,
but without a really good announcer!

 

Interview with Altay Coskun (Were the Romans Generous in Conveying their
Citizenship?): http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts301/coskun.html (coming very
soon!)

Interview with Sheila Ager (West meets East: Greeks, Persians, and the Birth
of "Orientalism"): http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts301/ager.html

Interview with Mat Schulze (Cultural Encounter of the Language Kind):
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts301/schulze.html

 

 

Complete details at www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts301.

 

James M. Skidmore

Chair of the Dept. of Germanic & Slavic Studies

Faculty of Arts / University of Waterloo

Waterloo, ON  N2L 3G1  CANADA

 

E | skidmore at uwaterloo.ca

W | www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~skidmore

W | www.germanicandslavic.uwaterloo.ca

T | 519.888.4567, x33687

F | 519.746.5243

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://artslist.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/artsannounce/attachments/20100129/f68dab0a/attachment.html