Philosophical Foundations Of The Humanities - Special Lecture Series

Date: 
Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 10:00
Venue: 
Mod Lang Annex

ARTS 701
FEBRUARY – MAY 2014
SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES OPEN TO THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY AND GENERAL PUBLIC
Time: 10 am – 12 noon, Thursdays
Venue: Casa Hispanica Conference Room—Mod Lang Annex
Reginald Amonoo Bldg Next to Athletic Oval

Feb 13       Gordon S.K. Adika, Senior Research Fellow & A’g Director of Language Center — Disciplinary cultures, text construction and academic attribution: credibility and accountability in academic writing

Feb 20      Helen Lauer, coordinator, Professor of Philosophy — What are these things called hermeneutics and critical theory? The methodology of research and nature of discourse in the humanities

Feb 27      J.H.K. Nketia, Emeritus Professor of Music, Director Int’l Centre for Music & Dance, School of Performing Arts

March 6    holiday Independence Day

March 13   E. John Collins, Professor of Music

March 20   Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University NYC

March 27   Kofi Anyidoho, Professor of Literature / Director CODESRIA-U. Ghana African Humanities Programme

April 3       Kofi Emmanuel Ackah, Associate Professor of Classics, HoD Philo & Classics

April 10     Akosua Anyidoho, Professor of Linguistics

April 17     Francis Nii-Yartey, Assoc. Professor of Dance, HoD Dance Studies; Director Noyam Dance Institute

April 24     Kwame Gyekye, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

May 1       holiday May Day

May 8       Kwesi Yankah, Professor of Linguistics, President of Central University, Accra
 

TOPICS

Gordon Adika (Feb. 13): Credibility and accountability in academic discourse: essential skills and strategies. Scholarship in the humanities requires recognising disciplinary cultures, understanding the anatomy of text construction, and respecting the conventions of academic attribution. Good scholarly work evinces reliability, which requires practising protocols that signal a willingness and ability to justify every assertion that one makes, using the language styles that characterise humanities texts.

Helen Lauer (Feb 20): Some of the unique history, vision, purpose and methods underlying humanities scholarship; the notion of hermeneutics; challenging and critiquing knowledge monopolies; the sources of credibility when we relinquish the scientific presumptions of objective neutrality. How we communicate the warranty of knowledge claims their supporting evidence is not drawn directly from statistical data based on sampling.

J.H.K. Nketia (Feb 27): The humanities are the premier domain in academia where competing views and values are expressed and interrogated, acting as the intellectual crucible for social transformation. Nketia reviews the formulation of research agendas in the humanities contributing to political campaigns for social transformation through the lens and practice of the performing arts, and the historical impact this academic cultural activism has had in the building of a nation.

John Collins (March 13): Producing top ranking contributions in all fields of the Arts requires challenging and augmenting or even replacing the models and universal principles currently assumed to satisfactorily portray and explain the human condition. This chapter presents the need for alternatives to the standard linear model of social change and cultural reformations by exhibiting the multiple interfaces between the traditional and modern in Ghanaian neo-traditional music.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (March 20): Topic TBA. Best known for her seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985) which is regarded as the opening text of postcolonial discourse, this critical theorist is internationally renowned as a key expositor of the elusive and esoteric post structuralist Derrida; while simultaneously she insists upon centralising the cultural texts of those marginalized by dominant western culture: the new immigrant, the working class, women, and other identities denied the voice of authority.

Kofi Anyidoho (March 27): Data uniquely available to African humanities scholars prompts a reformulation of methodologies to suit the multiple legacies of verbal (spoken and written) and non-verbal self expression and communication. Kofi Anyidoho details some of the methods and techniques appropriate for studying oral and non-verbal cultural legacies in contrast with written traditions.

Kofi Ackah (April 3): The depiction and investigative analysis of contemporary concerns and problems facing individuals in relation to their communities in this age of globalisation is a central mandate throughout the disciplines of the humanities. The texts of antiquity are resources for creative critical social theory.
Akosua Anyidoho (April 10): In artistic, literary and phenomenological inquiries the subject matter talks and sometimes explains itself. Therefore language is central to the medium, method and substance of all disciplines in the humanities. Akosua Anyidoho will discuss the significance of first language in knowledge production and accumulation from primary school through advanced studies.

Francis Nii-Yartey (April 17): Intangible cultural heritage is the data base upon which advanced inquiries are conducted in all disciplines of social sciences, the arts and letters. Thus the indigenous performing arts and their synergistic derivatives in contemporary staged dance are an important focus of current humanities scholars’ investigation of the current human condition.

Kwame Gyekye (April 24): The characteristic value-orientedness of the humanities is a unique capacity. Gyekye reveals academic discourse as a vehicle for promoting indigenous African values.

Kwesi Yankah (May 8): Humanities discourse provides the most direct and uncompromising vehicle to express political beliefs and affect social change. Severe obstacles characterise the predicament of professional scholars of arts and letters based in the global South, due to the divisions of intellectual labour set by foreign cultures and articulated in the languages of former and neo-colonising nations.