CHF Chicago Humanities Festival

Special Event

  • E-Mail
    (e.g. amandasmith@gmail.com)

    (Please separate multiple email addresses with commas.)

    (You may use or edit the message above.)

  • PRINT

  • Share

  • TEXT SIZE
Androids and Dracula

Classics in Context 2011 Series From Androids & Samba to Devices & Dracula

ABOUT 

  • ABOUT Bill Brown

    Bill Brown is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature and a member of the Department of Visual Arts and of the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. He is also a fellow at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and coeditor of Critical Inquiry.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Hillary Chute

    Hillary Chute is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor Department of English, a faculty affiliate of the Center for Gender Studies, and faculty co-sponsor of the American Literatures and Cultures workshop at the University of Chicago. A 2006 graduate of Rutgers University, was a Junior Fellow in literature at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2007-2010.  She is the author most recently of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. Profile

  • ABOUT Jules Law

    Jules Law is a specialist in literary theory and Victorian literature. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Empiricism (Cornell 1983) and The Social Life of Fluids:  Blood, Milk, and Water in the Victorian Novel (Cornell 2010). He has received numerous teaching and public-service awards, most recently the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching (2007) and the Centro Romero Community Leadership award (2008).

    Profile

  • ABOUT Alfredo Caesar Melo

    Alfredo Cesar Melo studies Luso-Brazilian Literature with a focus on the experimental novel, history of ideas and the essay as a genre. His research is focused on Gilberto Freyre work and its connections with the Spanish American essay and with the Lusophone intellectual world. He has published articles on Gilberto Freyre, Euclides da Cunha and Fernando Ortiz.

    Profile

  • ABOUT John Shanahan

    John Shanahan teaches courses at DePaul on the rise of the novel, restoration and eighteenth-century English drama, and literature and science. His research interests include seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature, the history of science, literary theory, and the changing relations of science and literature since the Renaissance.

    Profile
Click next to learn more...

1 of 1

You are invited to join other Chicago-area educators at the 2011 Classics in Context series. This is your chance to examine some of the greatest works of literature with an eye on integrating them into your classroom. Teachers can earn up to 3 free CPDUs for attending each event and refreshments are provided!

Click here to register for events.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick

Saturday, February 26, 2011
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Franke Institute for the Humanities
University of Chicago

Philip K. Dick’s landmark science fiction novel follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard as he hunts down androids and dreams of owning a real, live sheep. The basis for the critically-acclaimed film Blade Runner, this novel explores some of science fiction’s most timeless questions: what makes us human? What could the unforeseen consequences of our technology be? In our relationship with technology, who is the master and who is the slave? Join University of Chicago Professors Bill Brown and Hillary Chute for a discussion of this dystopian sci-fi classic and the moral implications of human technology.

Samba-Enredo by João Almino

Saturday, March 12, 2011
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Chicago

University of Chicago Professor Alfredo Cesar Melo, an expert on Portuguese culture and literature with a focus on the experimental novel, will lead this discussion of João Almino’s Samba-Enredo. Full of irony and insight into modern Brazilian culture, this detective-style story is narrated by a witty and lyrical computer. João Almino is one of Brazil’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, in addition to serving as the Consul General of Brazil in Chicago, and has been compared to celebrated Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis. Participants will read a new, yet to be published translation of Samba-Enredo, and the author himself will join us as a special guest speaker at this session.

“Literary Devices” by Richard Powers

Thursday, April 14, 2011
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
DePaul Humanities Center, DePaul University

Contemporary author Richard Powers explores the implications of modern science and technology through a masterful blend of science, philosophy, and literature. He explores the relationship between technology and creativity in this story, in which a writer begins a correspondence with a computer program designed to generate stories. DePaul University Professor and literature of science expert, John Shanahan, leads this discussion of a thought-provoking contemporary short story.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Saturday, May 21, 2011
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Northwestern University

Bram Stoker’s classic gothic novel reflects the two great fears of prosperous, technologically sophisticated, Victorian England at the height of imperial expansion: invasion and regression into earlier, darker times. “The human characters in Dracula,” reads the preface to the Norton Critical Edition of the text, “surround themselves with modern gadgets and skills... but they must combat an ancient enemy with ancient beliefs.” Dracula, and the modern tradition of vampire-lore that it gave rise to, has grown in popularity since its publication in 1897. What does Dracula represent to modern readers? Explore these and other topics with Northwestern University Professor Jules Law.

Similar Programs

blog comments powered by Disqus
Support CHF - Donate Now

Festival Sponsors

© Copyright 2011 Chicago Humanities Festival