Nussbaum, the Ernest Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, will present “The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear.” Her talk will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the University Center ballroom, Room 329. Following her presentation there will be a brief reception.

Nussbaum is an American philosopher and political theorist with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights. She holds appointments in the University of Chicago’s philosophy department and law school as well as associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science.

Nussbaum previously taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. She has received honorary degrees from more than forty colleges and universities in the US, Canada, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

“There is hardly anyone today who would not rank Martha Nussbaum as one of America’s leading intellectuals. She is a model for all of us on what it means to participate in society in a measured and intelligent way,” said Tom Heffernan, Kenneth Curry Professor in the Humanities and director of the UT Humanities Center. “Her work on feminism and the situation of women in nonwestern countries is some of the most trenchant and influential commentary being written today.”

Heffernan said Nussbaum is invited to speak all over the world, so arranging her visit is a coup for UT.

“Her acceptance of our invitation—given the complexity of her schedule and the dozens of requests she receives—will extend the visibility of UT and the UT Humanities Center,” he said.

Nussbaum has served as a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki and as a part of the United Nations University. She has published nineteen books and almost 400 essays. She is currently working on her twentieth book, to be titled Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice.

Here’s a look at the rest of the series:

• Monday, September 30—Edward Hirsch, poet, author, and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He will talk about applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship and also give a poetry reading. A MacArthur Fellow, Hirsch has published eight books of poems. His most recent, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, compiles thirty-five years of work. His awards include the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.

Lecture, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., John D. Tickle Engineering Building, Room 403; poetry reading, 7:00 p.m., Hodges Library Lindsay Young Auditorium.

• Tuesday, October 15—Amy Murrell Taylor, associate professor of history, University of Kentucky. Her talk is entitled “On the Frontlines of Freedom: Life Inside the US Civil War’s ‘Contraband’ Camps.” An historian of the US South with a special interest in the Civil War era, gender, and family, Taylor is the author of The Divided Family in Civil War America and co-editor of Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her essays have appeared in popular publications including The Civil War Monitor magazine and The Civil War: Official Park Service Handbook.

4:00 p.m., University Center Shiloh Room (Room 235).

• Monday, March 10—Patricia Buckley Ebrey, professor of history, University of Washington. Her talk is entitled “Emperor Huizong: Daoist, Poet, Painter, Captive.” She will offer a fresh look at the Chinese emperor who came to the Song Throne in the first month of 1100, a few months after his seventeenth birthday, and reigned almost twenty-six years. Rather than dwell on the turmoil caused by his reign, she will look at the ruler as a skilled poet, painter, calligrapher, musician, and art collector.

Time and location to be announced.

• Thursday, April 24—Carole Pateman, distinguished professor emeritus of political science, University of California, Los Angeles.

Details of her talk, as well as its time and location, to be announced.

For more information about the Humanities Lecture series, visit the Humanities Center website.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Philippe Buc

Religious intolerance. Chinese history. Slave emancipation. These are among the topics that will be addressed by prominent scholars in the second annual lecture series presented by the UT Humanities Center.

The series kicks off Monday, September 9, with Philippe Buc, a history professor at the University of Vienna, whose lecture is entitled “The Sacred and the Secular: Conflict and the Creation of a Moral World.” His talk will begin at 5:00 p.m. in Hodges Library’s Lindsay Young Auditorium.

Buc’s research focuses on religion and power in pre modern western Europe, from the second to the fourteenth century. He is the author of two books, L’ambiguïté du Livre. Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible (The Ambiguity of the Book. Prince, Power, and the People in Biblical Commentaries) and Dangers of Ritual. He is now researching and writing a third book that looks at holy war, martyrdom, and terror.

Here’s a look at the rest of the series:

• 

  Martha Nussbaum

  Monday, September 16—Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago. Her talk is entitled “The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear.” She will talk about how the Muslim community has been stigmatized for the horrific events of 9-11 and will offer a “rational and morally appropriate prescription” to allay the anxieties and prejudices against the Muslim population. Nussbaum has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. She has received honorary degrees from more than forty colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Asia, Africa, and Europe. She has written nineteen books and is working on another, to be titled Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice.

3:30 to 4:30 p.m., University Center Auditorium, Room 329. Brief reception to follow.

• 

  Edward Hirsch

  Monday, September 30—Edward Hirsch, poet, author, and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He will talk about applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship and also give a poetry reading. A MacArthur Fellow, Hirsch has published eight books of poems. His most recent, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, compiles thirty-five years of work. His awards include the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.

Lecture, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., 1210-1211 McClung Tower; poetry reading, 7:00 p.m., Hodges Library Lindsey Young Auditorium.

• 

  Amy Murrell Taylor

  Tuesday, October 15—Amy Murrell Taylor, associate professor of history, University of Kentucky. Her talk is entitled “On the Frontlines of Freedom: Life Inside the US Civil War’s ‘Contraband’ Camps.” An historian of the US South with a special interest in the Civil War era, gender, and family, Taylor is the author of The Divided Family in Civil War America and co-editor of Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her essays have appeared in popular publications including The Civil War Monitor magazine and The Civil War: Official Park Service Handbook.

4:00 p.m., University Center Shiloh Room (Room 235).

• 

  Patricia Buckley Ebrey

  Monday, March 10—Patricia Buckley Ebrey, professor of history, University of Washington. Her talk is entitled “Emperor Huizong: Daoist, Poet, Painter, Captive.” She will offer a fresh look at the Chinese emperor who came to the Song Throne in the first month of 1100, a few months after his seventeenth birthday, and reigned almost twenty-six years. Rather than dwell on the turmoil caused by his reign, she will look at the ruler as a skilled poet, painter, calligrapher, musician and art collector.

Time and location to be announced.

• Thursday, April 24—Carole Pateman, distinguished professor emeritus of political science, University of California, Los Angeles.

Details of her talk, as well as its time and location, to be announced.

For more information about the Humanities Lecture series, visit the website.

—

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

A public celebration is planned to formally open the center at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 5, at the McClung Museum in Circle Park. The event will feature Princeton University philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, who will present “The Life of Honor.” A public reception will follow in the museum. The event is free and open to the public.

Appiah is a renowned philosopher, cultural theorist and novelist. He was born in London, England but raised in Ghana and focuses on political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind and African intellectual history. He earned a doctorate from Cambridge University and is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University.

Formed by the College of Arts and Sciences last spring, the University of Tennessee Humanities Center aims to deepen and enrich research in the subjects like philosophy, history, languages, art, music, law, and linguistics, among other humanities subjects. The center now has four faculty and four graduate student fellows. Their work aims to explore the human endeavor and preserve our cultural heritage.

“The humanities, like the food which nourishes our bodies, sustain and deepen our understanding of our place in this complex universe,” said Thomas Heffernan, the Kenneth Curry Professor in the Humanities and director of the center. “The humanities are central to our development as sentient human beings. Can anyone imagine Jefferson penning the American Declaration of Independence without his deep and continuous life-long study of the humanities or the Abrahamic religions without the millennial-long study of the sacred scriptures manuscripts?”

The center is part of the broader university goal of becoming a Top 25 public research university. Humanities disciplines are core requirements in UT’s curriculum and are central to any well-rounded education by developing critical thinking, creativity, and intellectual curiosity, along with an understanding, appreciation, and civic responsibility for our culture, he added.

Event visitor parking is available at the Circle Park. A two-hour parking permit may be obtained at the Campus Information Center in front of Circle Park Drive.

The University of Tennessee Humanities Center is grateful for support from the Haines Morris Endowment, Ready for the World, and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Appiah is the author of several books including The Ethics of Identity, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Experiment in Ethics, and The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. He has also written three novels and reviews regularly for the New York Review of Books. He is past-president of the PEN American Center, the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization, and the American Philosophical Association. In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 global thinkers and in 2012, President Obama presented him with a National Humanities Medal.

For more information about the center, visit the website.

—

C O N T A C T :

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

According to data recently published by the NEH on fellowships received from 2005 to 2012, UT ranks eighth in the nation, with ten fellowship awards.

UT shares this esteemed position with the University of California, Irvine; the University of Chicago; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Vanderbilt University; and the University of Virginia.

UT ranks behind only the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Washington University, and the University of Texas.

NEH research fellowships are among the most prestigious awards in the humanities. In the last five competitions, the NEH fellowship program received more than 1,200 applications per year and awarded fewer than 100 per year.

UT’s NEH recipients include:

• Janet Atwill, professor of English, for “The Role of Character in Greek Rhetorical Training”

• J.P. Dessel, associate professor of history,  for “Acting Locally: Rethinking the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I From a Village Perspective”

• Hilde De Weerdt, assistant professor of history, for “News and Identity in Imperial China, 10th-13th Centuries.” Currently at Oxford University.

• James Fitzgerald, professor of religious studies, for “An Annotated Translation of the Cosmologies of the Moksha Anthology of the Hindu Epic Mahabharata.” Currently at Brown University.

• Dorothy Habel, professor of art history and director of the School of Art, for a project entitled “The Impact of Public Opinion on the Urban Building Process in Baroque Rome”

• Thomas Heffernan, professor of English and religious studies and director of the Humanities Center, for a project titled “An Edition of ‘The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,’ a Late Ancient Prison Memoir”

• Heather Hirschfeld, associate professor of English and director of the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, for “Tragedies of Satisfaction in the English Renaissance”

• Vejas Liulevicius, professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of War and Society, for “German Utopias in Eastern Europe, 1914-1955″

• Roy M. Liuzza, professor of English, for “Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: Texts and Studies”

• David Reidy, professor of philosophy and head of the philosophy department, for “John Rawls: An Intellectual Biography”

The initiative to increase the number of faculty fellowship awards at UT as a measurable part of the UT Top 25 project is a joint effort of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of Research.

The university is also officially opening its new Humanities Center this fall. The center is focused on building more research support for projects that explore history, literature, art, law, philosophy, and languages.  A formal kickoff for the center is set for September 5.