Forum on Literature and the Arts
2017 Series: Belief
Too often dismissed, bracketed, or explained away, the concept of religious belief seems to resist serious enquiry. Yet writers of the later Middle Ages produced stunning analyses of belief that distinguished it from mere opinion, and from other kinds of understanding. In this series, we will turn a close eye toward the nature and psychology of belief, asking what thoughts and feelings it might enable, provoke, or shut down; its relationship to spiritual practice and ecclesiastical censure; and the role of faith in the production of scientific knowledge, literature, and histories of modernity.
2 June 2017
‘The Immoveable Centre of Truth: Some Late Thirteenth-Century Discussions of the Nature of Self-Awareness’
Associate Professor Chris Martin (The University of Auckland)
9 June 2017
‘The History of the Person: Scholasticism and Human Rights’
Dr Clare Monagle (Macquarie University)
1 September 2017
'The Will to Believe: Freedom of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy and Literature'
Chantelle Saville (The University of Auckland)
All seminars will take place on Friday afternoons at 4pm in the Boardroom (Room 601) of the Advanced Engineering Building (Building 49).
The series will conclude with a masterclass and seminar by Associate Professor Kellie Robertson (The University of Maryland) on 23 and 24 November 2017. Further details will be available closer to the time.
