Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Charles Darwin Symposium

Darwin Across the Disciplines

A symposium marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth & the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species

Presented by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies & Duke's University Institutes

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Thursday, November 5th

• 4:00 – 5:45 PM: Welcome. Srinivas Aravamudan (Duke University), Dean of Humanities and Professor of English

A Laboratory of Islands: Charles Darwin’s Pacific Project. Iain McCalman (University of Sydney), Professor of History, Professorial Research Fellow and Australian Research Council Fellow

Respondent: Ana P. Barros (Duke University), Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

Chair: Srinivas Aravamudan

• 6:15 – 7:45 PM: Behavioral Evolution: How Language and Technologies Make Us Human. Mark B. N. Hansen (Duke University), Professor, Program in Literature, Information Science + Information Studies, Visual Studies Initiative

Respondent: Michael Platt (Duke University), Associate Professor of Neurobiology, School of Medicine; Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Chair: Julie Tetel Andresen (Duke University), Associate Professor of English

Friday, November 6th

• 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM: The Descent of Man, Human Nature, and the Nature/Culture Divide, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Independent scholar and Department of Philosophy (University of Oregon)

Respondent: Daniel McShea (Duke University), Associate Professor of Biology; Center for the Philosophy of Biology

Chair: Anne Yoder (Duke University), Professor, Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology; Director, Duke Lemur Center; Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy

• 1:30 – 3:00 PM: Deep Reading: Science, Religion, and the Incoherence of Belief, Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Duke University), Braxton Craven Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory

Respondent: David C. Rubin (Duke University), Juanita M. Kreps Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Chair: Ian Baucom (Duke), Director, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute; Professor of English

• 3:30 – 5:00 PM: Roundtable – After Darwin: “On Being Human”

Participants: Ian Baucom; Paul Griffiths (Duke University); Warren Professor of Catholic Theology, Divinity School; Geoffrey Harpham (National Humanities Center), Director; Toril Moi (Duke University), James B. Duke Professor of Literature & Romance Studies and Professor of English; Steve Nowicki (Duke University), Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education and Professor of Biology

Questions? email fhi@duke.edu

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