Dialogues of Enlightenment

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities was the host for the Annual Conference of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes in Edinburgh on 11-13 June 2009.
140 delegates from around the world met to discuss the conference theme of Dialogues of Enlightenment

Much of the interdisciplinary research conducted in humanities centres and institutes is advanced through the lively exchange of ideas, including formal and informal conversations in which views are formed, evidence is tested, and conclusions are modified. At their best, these conversations become dialogues. In both European and other traditions dialogue has been a key mechanism for generating inquiry, leading to enlightenment across many fields of human endeavour. Dialogue allows the present to confront the past and the past to confront the present. As a genre in its own right, it is important for detailed study.

The resources of Edinburgh and the history of IASH make this theme particularly appropriate for a CHCI meeting. ‘Dialogues of Enlightenment’ will however have a thoroughly contemporary focus: local facilities and historic sites will come into active relation with the conference through involvement with non-academic partners and historic and current venues of Enlightenment. Together we shall engage in interrogating locality and mobility; intellectual, religious, verbal and imaginative exchange; communication and misunderstanding across space and time; lines of servitude, oppression and emancipation; and the possibilities and limitations of knowledge generated through dialogue.

Some panels will take the form of actual dialogues focusing on polarities in conversation; others will consider dialogue as a theoretical and generic concept of Enlightenment, in the work of Hume and Kant, for example. Panels will feature pairs of speakers reflecting the diversity of dialogues among disciplines – science, religion, philosophy, politics, and music; other sessions will be devoted to dialogues between East and West, and to contemporaneous conversations with the past. Music – in performance and in academic dialogue – will be a significant feature of the conference. In a new departure for CHCI, one session will take the form of a group conversation about a particular text. We shall use Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, to address the idea of dialogue, the possibility of cultural difference, and questions of belief. We ask that all attendees familiarise themselves with the Hume text in the Penguin edition.

Conference Programme

Thursday, 11 June 2009
Playfair Library, Old College
University of Edinburgh

6.00 pm onwards	Registration
5.30 pm	Reception for Conference participants. Welcome by Professor April McMahon, Vice Principal and Head of College of Humanities and Social Science, The University of Edinburgh. Music provided by the Rose Street Quartet.

Friday, 12 June 2009
Playfair Library, Old College

9.00 am	Session 1/Plenary Lecture Baroness Onora O’Neill (President, The British Academy) Making Reason Public: the Necessary Conditions for Dialogue Chair: Susan Manning (Director, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh)
10.30 am	Break
11.00 am	Session 2/Dialogue: Whose Enlightenment? Maria Rosa Menocal (Director, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University) Akeel Bilgrami (Director, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University) Chair: Carole Hillenbrand (Emeritus Professor of Islamic History, University of Edinburgh)
12:30 pm	Lunch
1.30 pm	Session 3/Workshop: Trans-Regional Conditions of the Humanities Hsiung Ping-Chen (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) Timothy Murray (Director, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University) Debjani Ganguly (Head, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University)
4.00 pm	Tour of the Scottish Parliament
5.30 pm	Session 4/Plenary Lecture in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament Wole Soyinka (Writer, Poet, Playwright, Nobel Laureate in Literature) Enlightenment and the New Enthusiasms Chair: The Deputy Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament Vote of thanks: Srinivas Aravamudan (President, CHCI)
6.30 pm	Reception in the Garden Lobby of the Scottish Parliament. Guests were addressed by Michael Russell, MSP (Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution) on behalf of the Scottish Government

Saturday, 13 June 2009
Playfair Library, Old College

9.00 am	Session 5/Dialogue: David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Discussion Leader: Robert Gibbs (Director, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto)
10.30 am	Coffee
11.00 am	Session 6/Workshop: Creating Dialogue Sarah Buie (Director, Higgins School of the Humanities, Clark University) Daniel Herwitz (Director, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan)
12.30 pm	Lunch, with New Directors’ Introductions and CHCI Business Meeting
2.30 pm	Session 7/Dialogue: Placing Enlightenments, Then and Now Charles McKean (Professor of Architectural History, University of Dundee) Stuart Taberner (Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture and Society, University of Leeds, and Director, Leeds Humanities Research Institute) Chair: Frédéric Ogée (Professor of English Literature and Vice Président, Bureau des relations internationales, Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot)
4.00 pm	Tea
4.30 pm	Session 8/Dialogue: Music: The Language of the Enlightenment? Michael Steinberg (Director, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University) Ruth HaCohen (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
6.15 pm	St. Cecilia’s Hall, Cowgate Lecture/Recital by Kirsteen McCue and David Hamilton commemorating Robert Burns’ 250th Anniversary, followed by reception at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, 43-45 High Street

Optional Tours

Sunday 14 June 2009

These tours must be pre-booked and places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Day tour to Paxton House, Berwick upon Tweed (cost £35)

Set in the beautiful Scottish Borders and built in 1758 for a young Scottish Laird, Patrick Home of Billie, award winning Paxton House is one of the finest 18th century Palladian country houses in Britain. Built by John Adam on a ridge overlooking the River Tweed, Paxton House features 12 period rooms many boasting interiors by Robert Adam and fine collections of Chippendale and Trotter furniture. The magnificent Picture Gallery houses over 70 paintings from the National Galleries of Scotland, including masterpieces by Raeburn, Wilkie and Lawrence. You can also enjoy over 80 acres of gardens, woodland and park-land and a mile of the breathtaking River Tweed.

The cost of the tour includes:

coach travel from Edinburgh
a full guided tour of the House plus a summary session with the Curator giving access to the collection in more detail and a visual presentation showing the Paxton collection and particularly the Chippendale furniture in context
lunch
time to explore the extensive grounds.

Morning Walking Tour of Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns (cost £15)

Explore the delights of the city of Edinburgh, a World Heritage Site, with architectural historian, Professor Charles McKean –

Twin Citadels – Beginning on the Castle Esplanade, walking through the crucible of the Enlightenment, the homes of its literati and clubs, down into the Canongate, and up Jacob’s ladder to the Acropolis of Modern Athens, through its streets to Charlotte Square.

N.B. Please bring comfortable shoes!