In their recent book, Permanent Crisis, Chad Wellmon and Paul Reitter argue that the modern humanities have always understood themselves in crisis, even as crisis discourse does not serve the humanities well and is perhaps best abandoned. Join us for a discussion of the history and fate of the modern humanities, and how we can move from a state of crisis to one of flourishing.
Tuesday, April 26 at 6:30 p.m at the Vincent P. Walter Room in Curley Hall, Catholic University of America.
A recording will be made available after the event.
Jennifer Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy and Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow at the University of South Carolina, as well as a fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics. Her writing has also been featured in Breaking Ground, First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens.
Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College and founder and president of the Catherine Project (www.catherineproject.org). Trained as a scholar in classical philosophy, her 2020 book, Lost In Thought, has been widely discussed, including in the Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Commonweal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her essays in defense of learning for its own sake have appeared in New Statesman, Modern Age, The Chronicle Review, The Tablet (UK), and the Washington Post.
Chad Wellmon is Professor of German Studies, with appointments in History and Media Studies, at the University of Virginia, where he teaches and writes about the history of knowledge and information, the history of technology and universities, and media and social theory. He has written or edited books on the history of anthropology, the modern research university, the history of reading and print, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Max Weber. His most recent book is Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age. He is currently finishing a book titled After the University.
