"HOSTING THE STRANGER"

AN INTERDISPLINARY SEMINAR ON HOSPITALITY AND EMBODIED IMAGINATION

directed by Richard Kearney (Boston College)

  in collaboration with Gloriana Davenport (visiting Professor, MIT Media Lab)

OUTLINE SYLLABUS OF SEMINAR: Spring 2009

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1)    ‘Hosting the Stranger', Richard Kearney (Jan 14)

2)    ‘Hospitality: Transformational Environments', Glorianna Davenport (Jan 21)

     PART TWO: EMBODIED IMAGINATION: HOSTING THE STRANGER

3)    Scapegoating the Outsider (Kalpana Seshadri, James Bernauer, Susan Machalyzck) (Jan 28)

4)    ‘Hospitality and the Senses'  (Jeffrey Bloechl, Ellen Winner) (Feb 4)

5)    ‘The Sixth Sense: Portal to the Other', Panel discussion on La Dame à la Licorne (Anne Davenport, Richard Kearney, Mary-Joe Hughes) (Feb 11)

6)    Stranger as Enemy or Friend: Ricoeur, Derrida, Kristeva, Waldenfels (Chris Yates, Elizabeth Purcell, James Taylor) (Feb 18)

7)    ‘Medieval Allegories of Hosts and Hostes' (Pamela Berger and Matilda Bruckner) (March 11)

8)    ‘Sacred Eros: Hosting Uninvited Guests' (Amy Hollywood and Fanny Howe) (March 18)

9)    ‘Hospitality and Hostility: Racial Stereotypes of Asians and Africans' (video: Michael Civille, Eung-Jin Lee: Responses by Regine Jean-Charles, Christina Klein) (March 25)

10) 'Stran gers from the Deep' (Dorothy Cross moderated by Robin Lydenberg) (April 1). Also a Lowell Lecture.

11) ‘Across Borders: Alien Nations' (John Michalczyk, Raymond Helmick, response by Padraig O'Malley) (April 8)

12) 'P oetics of the Stranger' (Adam Fitzgerald, Paul Mariani and Christopher Ricks) (April 15)

13) 'Hospitality and Hostility in World Politics' (Noam Chomsky, responses by Ali Banuazizi, Stephen Pfohl)  (April 22) in Merkert 127 @ 6:30 PM

14) 'Guestbook Banquet' (Sheila Gallagher) (May 13)

(Each Seminar will include a short video collage and suggested reading).

PUBLIC EVENTS associated with the seminar

Concert: Songs of Sacred Welcome (Noirin Ni Riain & Company at Saint Mary's Chapel, 7:30 pm) (March 13)

Conference: 'Inter-Religious Hospitality in the Five Wisdom Traditions' (Devlin 101) (March 13-14) 

(a) 'Hospitality in Jewish Culture’, Panel with Ed Kaplan (Brandeis) and Jacob Meskin (Hebrew College), Friday 13th @ 3 - 4:30pm

(b) 'Hospitality in Christian Culture’, Panel with Catherine Cornille (BC) and Patrick Hederman (Abbot of Glenstal Abbey), Saturday 14th @ 9:30am - 11:00pm

(c) 'Hospitality in Muslim Culture’, Panel with Dana Sajdi (BC) and Joseph Lumbard (Brandeis), Saturday 14th @ 11:30am - 1:00pm

(d) ‘Hospitality in Hindu Culture’, Panel with Francis Clooney (Harvard) and Swami Tyagananda (Harvard and Vedanta Institute), Saturday 14th @ 2:00pm - 3:30pm

(e)  ‘Hospitality in Buddhist Culture’, Panel with Andy Rotman (Amherst) John Makransky (BC), Saturday 14th @ 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Guestbook/Lowell Lecture in Devlin 101, 5:30 pm: "Strangers of the Deep" by artist Dorothy Cross (April 1st)

Poetries of the Stranger: International Poetry Festival in Devlin 008 (7:30pm): (James Tate, Fanny Howe, John Ashbery; Henri Cole, Mark Strand, Jorie Graham; Adam Zagajewski, Lucie Brock-Broido, Derek Walcott) (April 17-19)

Conference: Phenomenologies of the Stranger

May 2, 2009 by GBP

Sponsored by the Institute for the Liberal Arts                                                                              

Conference: 'Phenomenologies of the Stranger' in Devlin 101 ( am 11am - 5:30pm) (May 2^nd)

Panel 1: Jack Caputo, Karmen MacKendrick                                  

Panel 2: Edward Casey, David Wood            

Panel 3: Simon Critchley, William Richardson

INQUIRIES

Some of the seminar's key questions of investigation:

• How does the embodied imagination relate to the Stranger in terms of
hospitality or hostility (given the common roots of hostis/hospes as both guest
and enemy)?

• How do the five physical senses relate to the spiritual senses, and
most especially the famous 'sixth' sense, as portals to an encounter
with the Other?

• How do humans 'sense' the dimension of the strange and alien in
different religions, arts and cultures?

• What exactly do 'embodied imaginaries' of hospitality and hostility
entail and how do they operate in language, psychology and social
interrelations (including racism, xenophobia and scapegoating)?

SYLLABUS

                                                  I: SEMINAR

 First, it will comprise an advanced interdisciplinary seminar bringing together a number of faculty and students from various departments at Boston College (philosophy, theology, fine art and film, history, English, political science, African studies, Romance languages, psychology and theatre). The seminar, scheduled for Spring 2009, will be directed by Prof Richard Kearney in colloboration with Glorianna Davenport (MIT Media Lab). Other invited participants include Dorothy Cross (visual artist and sculptor), Paul Freaney (Dunlaoghaire College of Art and Film, author of major research project on the five senses), Amy Hollywood (Harvard, expert on women mystics), John Caputo (philosopher, Syracuse University) Fanny Howe (poet, novelist), Francis Clooney (Centre for World Religions, Harvard), Simon Critchley (Levinas scholar, New School), Edward Casey (phenomenologist of embodied imagination, Stoneybrook), Noirin ni Riain (singer, musicologist), Julia Kristeva (writer, philosopher, feminist, University of Paris) and Mark P Hederman (philosopher, liturgist Benedictine Abbot), amongst others.

      Most philosophical attempts to understand the role of the Stranger - human or transcendent - have been limited to standard epistemological problems of other minds, metaphysical substances, body/soul dualism and related issues of consciousness and cognition.  This seminar intends to take the question of hosting the stranger to the deeper level of embodied imagination and the senses (in the Greek sense of aisthesis). It will ask such questions as: How does the embodied imagination relate to the Stranger in terms of hospitality or hostility (given the common root of hostis as both host and enemy)? How do we discern between projections of fear or fascination, leading to either violence or welcome? How do the five physical senses relate to the spiritual senses, and most especially the famous ‘sixth' sense, as portals to an encounter with the Other? How do humans ‘sense' the dimension of the strange and alien in different religions, arts and cultures? Is there such a thing as a carnal perception of alterity and verticality, which operates at an affective, pre-reflective, pre-conscious level? What exactly do ‘embodied imaginaries' of hospitality and hostility entail and how do they operate in language, psychology and social interrelations (including racism, xenophobia and scapegoating)? How do notions of empathy, sympathy, body-mapping and unconscious fantasy inform an aesthetics of the stranger, which registers the liminal space where the Self encounters Others? And what, finally, are the topical implications of these questions for an ethics and practice of tolerance and peace?

The seminar will also sponsor four events, available to a wider university audience and the Boston public generally.

1)    POETRIES OF THE STRANGER:

A poetry reading by leading contemporary poets -  John Ashbery, Fanny Howe, Derek Walcott, Adam Zagajewski, Henri Cole, Mark Strand, Lucie Brock-Broido, Jorie Graham, James Tate  - on the theme of stranger and strangeness as celebrated through poetic image, place and voice.

      (Organized and hosted by Adam Fitzgerald). April 17-19, 2008

2) PHENOMENOLOGIES OF THE STRANGER:  A colloquy on the embodied imagination and hospitality as explored in contemporary phenomenology and politics (invited participants include Jack Caputo,  Simon Critchley, Karmen MacKendrick,  Edward Casey, William Richardson, David Wood). May 2, Devlin 101, 2009

3)     THEOPHANIES OF THE STRANGER: A series of panels on how the theme of hosting the divine as a Stranger is featured in the major wisdom traditions, especially through the idioms of narrative and embodied imagination: Christian (Catherine Cornille and Patrick Hederman OSB), Hindu (Francis Clooney and Swami Tyagananda), Buddhist (John Makransky and Andy Motram), Muslim (Joseph Lumbard and Dana Sajdi), Jewish (Ed Kaplan and Jacob Meskin). March  14 2009

                                             II: INTERNET WEBSITE

Second, the project involves the parallel development of an Internet website entitled ‘The Guestbook' designed by John and Kascha Snaverly. This will explore the concept of embodied hospitality and sensory receptivity towards the ‘stranger'. It will result in a multi-media presentation (assisted by the AV department at Boston College and MIT Media Lab) based on the five senses as they are experienced in the spiritual cultures of major wisdom traditions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity). The multi-sensory event will take the form of an experiment in interactive liturgical imagination, combining various art forms (image, music, film, dance, cuisine, poetry).

                                          III: GUESTBOOK EVENTS

Third, the academic seminar and multi-media experiment will combine to provide the basis of a performance of ‘The Guestbook' to be held in a series of international centres for interspiritual and intercultural dialogue:  Boston College (USA), Glenstal Abbey (Ireland), Fireflies Intercultural Institute (Bangalore), ACCO International Theatre (Israel), The Schechen Buddhist Monastery (Kathmandu) and the Sufi Institute for the Performing Arts (Cairo).  The focus of this trans-national performance will be the decisive wager of war and peace issuing from the human capacity, today as throughout history, to welcome or annihilate the stranger.  The schedule for these performances is July 2009-July 2014.

                                          IV: GUESTBOOK DVD/DOCUMENTARY FILM

Finally, the project will be recorded and published as a DVD/Documentary Film, to be directed by Alan Gilsenan and Adam Fitzgerald and editd by Terri Nash, as well as an edited volume of the seminar and conferences.

The ‘Embodied Imagination' project will be seeking financial support and assistance from the new Liberal Arts Institute at Boston College, as well as ‘Religion and the Arts', The Jesuit Institute and the Lowell Humanities Lecture series. It may also apply for NEH and NEA funding, and a Templeton Foundation grant, as the project develops. If funding permits it may be possible to ask certain of our invited overseas participants in the seminar to also deliver a public lecture or performance to the larger BC and Boston community.

 The project represents the final stage of a continuing research project into a Poetics of Otherness conducted by Richard Kearney, including such publications as his ‘Philosophy at the Limits' trilogy, 2002-2004 (Strangers Gods and Monsters; On Stories; The God who May Be), Traversing the Imaginary: Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge (2007) and Interreligious Imagination: Hermeneutics of the Heart (2008). The research has already issued in a number of DVDs and CDs, written by Richard Kearney, including Strangers Others and Aliens (2002) and Ideas of Otherness (CBS series, 2005).

Invited participants from BC faculty include:

Philosophy: Jeffrey Bloechl,  James Bernauer, Vanessa Rumble, David Rasmuseen

Fine Art and Film: Pamela Berger, John Michalczyk, Sheila Gallagher, Michael Civille

McMullen Museum: Nancy Netzer

Sociology: Stephen Pfohl

English Literature: Kalpana Seshadri, Paul Mariani, Christina Klein, Dennis Taylor

Theology: Catherine Cornille, John Makransky, James Morris, Raymond Helmick

Political Science: Ali Banuazizi

History: Dana Sajdi, David Quigley

African Studies: Regine Jean-Charles

Psychology: Ellen Winner

Physics: Andrzej Herczynski

Theatre: Crystal Tiala

School of Theology and Ministry: Thomas Groome and Coleen Griffiths

Honors Program: Anne Davenport, Susan Michalczyk, Mary-Joe Hughes, Tom Epstein, Kevin Newmark

Romance Languages: Mathilda Bruckner, Ourida Mostefai, Anne Kearney

Computer Science: Stella Yu

The seminar will comprise approximately 20 faculty members and 25 students (grad and undergrad). Each member of the seminar will participate or contribute in some capacity in a seminar session according to their speciality.