Session 1

9:30–10:30 A.M.

The Mortal Voice on the Ancient Greek Stage

This presentations looks at how voice was used in ancient Greek comedy and tragedy to explore the outer limits of human experience by focusing on moments in fifth-century drama when language (logos) breaks down and leaves the inarticulate utterances of voice (phônê) to carry on alone. First we will consider what is at stake in such instances of voicing through works of Plato and Aristotle. The we will explore several instances of the intrusion into language of nonverbal vocal sounds in plays of Aristophanes, Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Sarah Nooter

Sarah Nooter is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics. Her interests include Greek drama, archaic poetry, literary theory, and contemporary poetry and theater. She is book review editor of Classical Philology and is the author of When Heroes Sing: Sophocles and the Shifting Soundscape of Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Beyond the Michigan Sea: Chicago Writing and Great Lakes Literature

Disrupting geographical and literary boundaries, this session reintroduces work by Chicago writers not in the context of a “Second City” in a generic Midwest, but as one center of Great Lakes/Rust Belt cultures. How do factors likes deindustrialization, economic migration, and globalization redefine writers like Saul Bellow, Jeffery Renard Allen, and Daniela Olszewska? Where does one locate Chicago on the compass: north, west, or even south?

Garin Cycholl

Garin Cycholl is Lecturer in the Committee on Creative Writing. His recent work has appeared with Admit2, Rain Taxi, Exquisite Corpse, New American Writing, and Seven Corners.  He is author of Blue Mound to 161 (winner of the 2003 Transcontinental Prize), Nightbirds, Levitations, and Raeftown Georgics.  Since 2002, he has been a member of Chicago’s Jimmy Wynn fiction collaborative.

What is a Man?

The past few years have witnessed a dramatic development: conversations about the rights and identities of transgender people have entered the public consciousness. Accordingly, the question of what gender identity is and how it should be handled socially and legally has taken on an urgency it never had before. This talk will bring some of philosophy's analytical resources to bear on this question.

Olga Solovieva

Olga Solovieva is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. Her work brings texts and concepts from numerous disciplines—including literature, film, religious studies, art history, philosophy, and law—into dialogue with one another. She is interested in what can "be done with words": this leads her to focus on the history of rhetoric, performance, communication, interdisciplinary narratology, and media studies, particularly in their material and corporeal aspects.

Benjamin Callard

Benjamin Callard is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy. His areas of specialization are ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. He also has strong interests in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of the mind, and the philosophy of language.

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