2003-04

 

Europe: A Multidisciplinary Feast

The 2004 MacKay Lecture Series considers Europe, and our understanding of Europe, from three different perspectives. The first lecture looks at the ancient Santiago pilgrimage in order to explore the diverse classical and other influences on the heritage of Europe. The focus of the second lecture is the wars that marked Europe’s twentieth-century history, and the quandaries that continue to be associated with the search for peace. The third lecture discusses problems of knowledge in European thought through a study of the writings of Hegel and Schelling.

 

Lecture One

"One Million Steps to the End of the Earth: The Santiago Pilgrimage"

John Thorp  Professor of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario. February 12, 7:30 p.m.

John Thorp studied at Upper Canada College, at Trent University and at Oxford, where he wrote two theses, one on Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics, and one on the intersection of the freewill problem with neurophysiology. After finishing his studies he taught at the University of Ottawa, where he was Chairman of the Classics Department, and at the University of Western Ontario, where he was Chair of the Philosophy Department. His research lies principally in ancient philosophy. He is currently President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. The Government of France has awarded Professor Thorp the honour of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques.

 

Lecture Two

"Winning Wars, Losing Peace"

Joe Schlesinger, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. March 8, 7:30 p.m.

Joe Schlesinger is currently co-host and a contributor to CBC Newsworld’s Foreign Assignment, and before that he was the CBC’s Chief Political Correspondent in Ottawa. He began work as a journalist in Prague in 1948, and came to Canada in 1950 following the communist takeover. He has reported on the major international events of the last half century, and his reporting in Europe has covered topics as varied as the travels of Pope John Paul II, the Portuguese revolution and the Romanian earthquake, haute cuisine in Paris, and the return of democracy to his native land. He is author of Time Zones (1990). His many awards include the Order of Canada, and an honorary LL.D. from Dalhousie University.

 

Lecture Three

"The Encyclopedia and the University: Hegel, Schelling and the Organization of Knowledge"

Tilottama Rajan, Canada Research Chair in English and Theory, University of  Western Ontario. March 22, 7:30 p.m.

Tilottama Rajan is Canada Research Chair in English and Theory at the University of Western Ontario, where she was previously Director of the Centre for Theory and Criticism. Following doctoral research at the University of Toronto, she taught at Queen’s University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and founded the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. Her many publications include Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology: Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard (2002), and After Poststructuralism: Writing the Intellectual History of Theory (co-editor, 2002). Professor Rajan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 

 

The MacKay Lecture in History

"From Courtship to Marriage to Just Shacking Up: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter in Canada, 1967-1985"

Ian McKay, Professor of History, Queen’s University. February 18, 7:30 

Ian McKay obtained his PhD in History from Dalhousie University. After initially focusing on class conflict in the coal fields of Nova Scotia, his scholarship diversified to include the cultural history of Atlantic Canada. He is author of The Quest of the Folk, a landmark exploration of how tourism has built an artificial sense of regional identity in the Maritimes.