George Rousseau (Oxford): The Two Cultures Fifty Years On: 1959-2009

Professor George Rousseau is an American cultural historian. He is holding a Chair at the History Faculty at Oxford University in Oxford, England where he is a Co-Director of the Centre for the History of Childhood. Rousseau is recognized as a cultural historian of international stature who especially works in the interface of literature and medicine, and who emphasizes the relevance of imaginative materials - literature, especially diaries and biography, art and architecture, music - for the public understanding of medicine, past and present.

Fifty years after the famous debates between C. P. Snow and F. R. Leavis the divisions of knowledge have altered, as have professional loyalties, disciplinary divides and the new interdisciplinarity. The question now is how we assess the degree to which the new debate about culture augurs an auspicious future. The 1959 debates were touchstones to reflect on deep differences between artists and scientists; now the touchstones summon us to interrogate the whole academic enterprise yet the original touchstones no longer touch.

Vortrag, veranstaltet von der Abteilung Anglistik/Amerikanistik I in Kooperation mit dem IZKT.