Mabel Moraña, William H. Gass Professor in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Spanish, and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis will return to Notre Dame as Distinguished Lecturer of the Kellogg Institute to deliver the inaugural talk of the Ph.D. in Spanish program of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures on Thursday, September 15th 2016 at 4:00p.m. in the Hesburgh Center Room 103.
Professor Moraña’s public lecture entitled “Humanism and Biopolitics: Monsters in the Human Zoo” will grapple with important issues of great interest for our Department:
Is humanism coming to an end or are we just witnessing a resignification of the concept? How is the crisis of humanism connected to biopolitics? What is the role of textual/human bodies in the construction of the body politic? The talk will examine the ways in which central debates on these topics resonate in postcolonial societies, where the pastoral project of humanism has been implemented with particular political and social connotations. Questions related to readership, canonical repertoires, and the role of education will be discussed as well as problems related to the challenges posed to humanism from the fields of social engineering and political technology.
