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DTSTAMP:20260510T200604Z
DESCRIPTION:Robert Pogue Harrison and Susan Stewart will speak at the Semin
 ar in Epistemologies of Material Culture. They will each speak briefly on 
 their publications The Dominion of the Dead and The Ruin Lesson\, respecti
 vely\, and then be in conversation.The Dominion of the DeadRobert Pogue Ha
 rrisonHow do the living maintain relations to the dead? Why do we bury peo
 ple when they die? And what is at stake when we do? In The Dominion of the
  Dead\, Robert Pogue Harrison considers the supreme importance of these qu
 estions to Western civilization\, exploring the many places where the dead
  cohabit the world of the living—the graves\, images\, literature\, archit
 ecture\, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us.Thi
 s elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of
  burial. Harrison contends that we bury our dead to humanize the lands whe
 re we build our present and imagine our future. As long as the dead are in
 terred in graves and tombs\, they never truly depart from this world\, but
  remain\, if only symbolically\, among the living. Spanning a broad range 
 of examples\, from the graves of our first human ancestors to the empty to
 mb of the Gospels to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial\, Harrison also conside
 rs the authority of predecessors in both modern and premodern societies. T
 hrough inspired readings of major writers and thinkers such as Vico\, Virg
 il\, Dante\, Pater\, Nietzsche\, Heidegger\, and Rilke\, he argues that th
 e buried dead form an essential foundation where future generations can re
 trieve their past\, while burial grounds provide an important bedrock wher
 e past generations can preserve their legacy for the unborn.The Dominion o
 f the Dead is a profound meditation on how the thought of death shapes the
  communion of the living. A work of enormous scope\, intellect\, and imagi
 nation\, this book will speak to all who have suffered grief and loss.The 
 Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western CultureSusan StewartHow have
  ruins become so valued in Western culture and so central to our art and l
 iterature? Covering a vast chronological and geographical range\, from anc
 ient Egyptian inscriptions to twentieth-century memorials\, Susan Stewart 
 seeks to answer this question as she traces the appeal of ruins and ruins 
 images\, and the lessons that writers and artists have drawn from their ha
 unting forms.Stewart takes us on a sweeping journey through founding legen
 ds of broken covenants and original sin\, the Christian appropriation of t
 he classical past\, and images of decay in early modern allegory. Stewart 
 looks in depth at the works of Goethe\, Piranesi\, Blake\, and Wordsworth\
 , each of whom found in ruins a means of reinventing his art. Lively and e
 ngaging\, The Ruins Lesson ultimately asks what can resist ruination—and f
 inds in the self-transforming\, ever-fleeting practices of language and th
 ought a clue to what might truly endure.Robert Pogue Harrison is the Rosin
 a Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and chairs the Department of Fr
 ench and Italian at Stanford University. He is the author of The Body of B
 eatrice\, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization\, The Dominion of the Dead\,
  Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition\, and Juvenescence: A Cultural H
 istory of Our Age\, the latter three published by the University of Chicag
 o Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He i
 s also host of the radio program Entitled Opinions on Stanford’s station K
 ZSU 90.1.Susan Stewart\, the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the
  Humanities at Princeton University\, is a poet\, critic\, and translator.
  A former MacArthur Fellow and Chancellor of the Academy of American poets
 \, she is the author of six books of poems\, including Columbarium\, which
  won the National Book Critics Circle Award\, and\, most recently\, Cinder
 : New and Selected Poems. Her many prose works include On Longing\, Poetry
  and the Fate of the Senses\, The Open Studio: Essays in Art and Aesthetic
 s\, The Poet’s Freedom\, and The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Wes
 tern Culture.  This event will be held via Zoom. A link will be circulated
  to registrants by 3 pm on the day of the event. This event will be live w
 ith automatic captions.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210414T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210414T193000
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Epistemologies of Material Culture
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