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Last modified: Thursday, January 27, 2011

IU scholars Chaouli and Wahrman to speak on 'interpretation'

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 27, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- "Interpretation: Deduction or Seduction?" is the topic for this year's Henry H.H. Remak Lecture sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University.

IU Bloomington faculty members Michel Chaouli and Dror Wahrman, the institute's Remak Scholars for 2010-11, will present the Henry H.H. Remak Lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3, in State Room East of the Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St.

Dror Wahrman and Michel Chaouli

Dror Wahrman (left) and Michel Chaouli

Print-Quality Photo

The speakers will open a dialogue about interpretation, the core activity of the humanities. What does it mean to produce an interpretation? What cognitive, affective and social resources does the process employ? How do we win others over to our ways of seeing? How does interpretation fit with such things as evidence, knowledge and truth?

The lecture is related to their year-long seminar on "Master Classes in the Humanities: The Art of Interpretation," which won the Institute for Advanced Study's Remak New Knowledge Seminar competition for 2010-11. The seminar includes a series of four public lectures for which two speakers remain: T.J. Clark of the University of California, Berkeley, on March 3-4; and Carlo Ginzburg of University of California, Los Angeles on April 14-15.

The Remak Lecture honors the late IU Professor Henry Remak who served the university with distinction for more than 65 years as a scholar, teacher and administrator. He directed the Institute for Advanced Study from 1988 to 1994 and from 1997 to 1998.

Chaouli, associate professor in the Department of Germanic Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His books include The Laboratory of Poetry: Chemistry and Poetics in the Work of Friedrich Schlegel (2002).

Wahrman, the Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences, holds a doctorate from Princeton University. His publications include Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780-1840 (1995) and The Making of the Modern Self (2004).

For more information, contact Ivona Hedin, academic specialist with the Institute for Advanced Study, at 812-855-3658 or ihedin@indiana.edu.