Charles Altieri, the Rachael Anderson Stageberg Professor of English from the University of California at Berkeley, will discuss why the value of art extends beyond morality and politics in his talk at Case Western Reserve University on Friday, March 27, at 3 p.m.
Reservations are not required for the free, public event in the Senior Classroom of the Tinkham Veale University Center. Altieri was invited by Case Western Reserve’s Department of English to speak at its English Colloquium.
At the center of Altieri’s talk is what Michael Clune, Case Western Reserve associate professor of English, describes as “the debate about the value of literature and the humanities in our increasingly market-driven society.”
“Critics and philosophers often respond to the hostility toward literature by defending it in moral, ethical or political terms,” Clune said. But Altieri, whom Clune describes as a leading poetry scholar, will explore how the artistic value of literature has a quality that transcends the realm of economics, ethics or politics.
The lecture draws from Altieri’s background as a specialist in 20th- and 21st-century American and British poetry and literature.
In his book, The Art of 20th Century American Poetry: Modernism and After, Altieri explores poetry in the context of the emerging scientific and philosophical changes that will bring about what he describes as a “new realism.”
Other notable works by Altieri include Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity: Toward a Phenomenology of Value and Reckoning with Imagination: Wittgenstein and the Aesthetics of Literature Experience.
For more information, contact Susan Dumbrys at sxd290@case.edu or 216.368.1508.
