In order to foster (and teach) the kinds of transdisciplinary examination of histories and techniques of the imagination in ways we consider most potentially productive, the Program in the Study of Imagination organizes faculty seminars, which meet throughout the academic year.

PSI faculty seminars are open to Northwestern Faculty at all ranks and in all schools and departments (as well as faculty at other, local institutions), and to interested graduate students. The seminars are organized around readings and occasional presentations of faculty research or works-in-progress; they meet twice or three times a quarter (up to eight times annually) and are generously hosted by the Alice Berline Kaplan Center of the Humanities. Themes covered will include: The Social Order of Imagination; Seeing with Closed Eyes: Art History and the Imagination; Performing Mental Process: the Arts of Imagination.

Faculty Seminars scheduled for 2002/2003:

Faculty Discussion:
Imagining Culture: Applying Culture As Models to Diversity Education
Bradd Shore
Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology
Director of the Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life
Emory University

Friday, May 23
3-4:30 p.m.
Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities
Northwestern University
2010 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL

Reading available at the below link:
Shore Article I
Shore Article II


Faculty Seminars scheduled for fall 2001:

Friday, October 19
Faculty Seminar
On Montaigne's "On the Force of Imagination"
Led by Katharine Park, Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science and of Women's Studies, Harvard University
Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities
2010 Sheridan Road
1:00 PM
(please request seminar materials by e-mailing psi@northwestern.edu)

Friday, November 9
Faculty Seminar
Cornelius Castoriadis and "The Social Imaginary" (texts circulated in advance)
Led by Dilip Gaonkar, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, Northwestern University
Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities
2010 Sheridan Road
1:00 PM
(please request seminar materials by e-mailing psi@northwestern.edu)

Friday, December 7
Faculty Seminar on "Hallucinogens"
Led by Richard Doyle, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Science Studies, The Pennsylvania State University
Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities
2010 Sheridan Road
1:00 PM
(please request seminar materials by e-mailing psi@northwestern.edu)