Thursday - Friday, November 5 - 6, 2009
Rare Book Room, Perkins Library

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 the Species

Presented in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost of Interdisciplinary Studies and Duke’s University Institutes

Program Schedule

Thursday, November 5

4:00 – 5:45 PM
Welcome
Srinivas Aravamudan (Duke University), Dean of Humanities

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 6

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, 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”
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
Alex Rosenberg (Duke University), Chair and R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy
Steve Nowicki (Duke University), Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education and Professor of Biology