18th Annual Humanities Colloquium: Knowledge and Action

Join the Humanities Council at Princeton University for a kick-off event featuring a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary conversation about central issues in our research, teaching, and intellectual life.

This year’s speakers, distinguished Princeton scholars whose work represents different approaches and historical periods, will participate in a panel discussion on the theme “Knowledge and Action.” In A Letter to My Nephew (1962), James Baldwin wrote: “[P]eople find it very difficult to act on what they know.  To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger.” Taking these words as a point of departure, the Colloquium ponders the role that knowing and acting play in our democracy in this election. The conversation will be moderated by Council Chair Esther Schor (English).

Speakers:

• Yelena Baraz (Classics; Society of Fellows), “Saving Persephone: Secondary Trauma and Bystander Intervention in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”
• Eliza Griswold (Journalism), “A Legacy in Action: Baldwin’s Influence in Contemporary Politics”
• Jan-Werner Müller (Politics), “The Will Not to Know: Varieties of Ignorance and the Rise of Autocracy in Our Time”
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (African American Studies), “Making America What America Must Become: Confronting Amnesia and Innocence after Baldwin”

Open to the University community. To see past events, please visit the Humanities Colloquium page on our website.