Past Events

While few will have shared director Terence Davies’ childhood experience of growing up in postwar Liverpool, many will empathize with the complex feelings of nostalgia, affection, and repulsion for the place he once called home. Essayistic in the best sense, the film earns its near unanimous critical praise by approaching the universal experience of growing up through an intense focus on an individual journey through a gritty, urban environment into adulthood.

Elisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. A specialist in 19th and 20th century literature, she has also written articles in the area of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and visual culture.

Panel Discussants: Peter Greenaway, Darcy Grigsby (History of Art) and Abigail de Kosnik (Theater, Dance & Performance Studies)
Moderator: Anthony J. Cascardi (Townsend Center Director)

Peter Greenaway, who trained as a painter for four years, started making films in 1966. His first narrative feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), earned him international acclaim as an original filmmaker, a reputation consolidated by The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996), The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004), and more recently, Nightwatching (2007).

Peter Greenaway, who trained as a painter for four years, started making films in 1966. His first narrative feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), earned him international acclaim as an original filmmaker, a reputation consolidated by The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996), The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004), and more recently, Nightwatching (2007).

In preparation for Avenali Lecturer Peter Greenaway’s visit to campus, the Townsend Center screens several of Greenaway’s films for viewing.

Winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson is regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin. He is also noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire.

This lecture uses the text of Assembly to discuss one of the most important cultural developments in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the re-configuration of both scholarly and popular consciousness about modern and contemporary Chinese history.

In 2007, Ang Lee’s film, Lust, Caution opened simultaneously in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was a sensation, leading to strong, passionate reactions. Dai Jinhua’s lecture approaches the interpretations and reception of Lust, Caution, along with the acclaim and denunciations of the film, as a cluster of socio-cultural symptoms.

Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University. She has written on issues such as the ethics of surrogate motherhood, the ethics of reproductive technologies, affirmative action, reverse discrimination and the courts, ethics of adoption, family values, and more recently on the effects of embedded journalism, women in the military, the ethics of war, and women suicide bombers.