UW Simpson Center: Inventions of the Imagination Conference Program

Conference Program

Program [download print version]

Friday, May 18 , 2007

Location: Kane 110

7:00 pm	Welcome: Ellen Kaisse (Divisional Dean for Arts & Humanities) Conference Introduction: Richard Gray (Germanics, UW)
	Speaker Introduction: Nicholas Halmi (English and Comparative Literature, UW)
	Keynote Address: David Clark (English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University), "Imagining Peace: Kant's Wartime and the Tremulous Body of Philosophy"
9:00 pm	Opening Reception in Walker-Ames Room, Kane 225

Saturday, May 19, 2007

SESSION 1: Theorizing the Imagination (Communications 226)

9:00 -	Nicholas Halmi (English and Comparative Literature, UW), Session Chair
11:15 am	John Lyons (French Languages & Literatures, University of Virginia)"Rousseau's Reveries and the End of Imagination"
	Richard Block (Germanics), "The History of the Imagination in Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism"
	Klaus Vieweg (Philosophy, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), "The Determinacy of Images: Hegel's Theory of Imagination"

SESSION 2: Imagination and Scientific Modeling (Communications 230)

9:00 -	Arthur Fine (Philosophy, UW), Session Chair
11:15 am	Andrea Woody (Philosophy, UW), "Imagining the Real: Models, Molecules, and Making Sense"
	Jeffrey Bub (Philosophy, University of Maryland), "Quantum Models"
	Georg Braungart (German Literature, University of Tubingen), "The Poetics of Nature: Literature and Constructive Imagination in the History of Geology"

11:30 -	Lunch and Keynote Address, McMahon Hall, Pompeii Room
1:30 pm	Remarks: Kathleen Woodward (Director, Simpson Center for the Humanities) Speaker Introduction: Michael Rosenthal (Philosophy, UW)
	Keynote Address: Robert Pippin (Philosophy, University of Chicago), "On the Nature of Hegel's Appeal to Literature in the Phenomenology of Spirit"

SESSION 3: Image, Non-Image, and Imagination (Communications 226)

2:00 -	Klaus Vieweg (Philosophy, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), Session Chair
4:15 pm	Wolfgang Welsch (Philosophy, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), "Imagination on the Move"
	Marshall Brown (Comparative Literature, UW), "Music and Imagination "
	Forest Pyle (English, University of Oregon), "The Romantic Image of the Intentional"

SESSION 4: Imaginative Interpretation (Communications 230)

2:00 -	Michael Rosenthal (Philosophy, UW), Session Chair
4:15 pm	Alexander Schlutz (English, City University of New York), "Fingo ergo sum: Descartes and the Problem of Imagination"
	Michael Forster (Philosophy, University of Chicago), "Herder, Hermeneutics, and Imagination in the Work of Interpretation"
	Ronald Moore (Philosophy, UW), "Imagination in Aesthetic Judgments Regarding Natural Objects"

SESSION 5: Film and the Documentary Imagination (Communications 226)

4:30 -	Jennifer Bean (Cinema Studies, UW), Session Chair
6:45 pm	Nora Alter (German, Film & Media Studies, University of Florida), "Strains of the Imagination: Sound as Fiction"
	Eric Ames (Germanics, UW), "The Herzog Touch"

SESSION 6: Post-Romantic Imaginaries (Communications 230)

4:30 -	Sabine Wilke (Germanics, UW), Session Chair
6:45 pm	Tillotama Rajan (English and Theory & Criticism, University of Western Ontario), "The Ends of Art: Hegel's Symbolic Art and Schelling's Historiography in The Ages of the World"
	John Toews (History, UW), "Imagination, Masculinity, and Autonomy in Early Freud"
	Christoph Bode (Modern English Literature, University of Munich), "Modernist Poetry and the Dichotomy of Romantic Imagination"

Sunday, May 20, 2007

SESSION 7: Reason and Imagination (Communications 226)

9:30 am -	Jane Brown (Germanics and Comparative Literature, UW), Session Chair
12:00 pm	Beth Lord (Philosophy, University of Dundee), "Between Imagination and Reason: Kant and Spinoza on Fictions"
	Michael Rosenthal (Philosophy, UW), "Spinoza on History and Narrative"
	Wilhelm Vosskamp (German Studies, University of Cologne), "Aesthetics of Freedom: On the Concept of Imagination in Schiller"

SESSION 8: Romantic Imagination (Communications 230)

9:30 am -	Gary Handwerk (English and Comparative Literature, UW), Session Chair
12:00 pm	Tommaso Pierini (Philosophy, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), "Skeptical Imagination"
	Hazard Adams (Comparative Literature, UW), "William Blake: Imagination, Vision, Inspiration, Intellect"
	Hellmut Ammerlahn (Germanics, UW), "The Mephistotelean, the Therapeutic, and the Playfully Creative Imagination in Goethe's Later Oeuvre"

12:15 - 2:00 pm	Concluding Conference Lunch, McMahon Hall