Major figures in philosophy, literature and the environment to lecture at the University of York
Posted on 10 October 2006
They are all due to speak at the University of York this autumn in a varied series of Public Lectures, all of which are free and open to the public.Writer and philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock will lecture on Assisted dying and the law, environmentalist Jonathan Porritt will talk on Sustainability, while critic, biographer and former University of York lecturer, Professor Hermione Lee, will give this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture. Professor Lee, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford, will talk on Writing biography: the case of Edith Wharton.
Other highlights include Pulitzer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon reading from his new collection Horse Latitudes, writer John Gittings speaking on The changing face of China: from Mao to market and Ingmar Persson, of Gothenburg University, speaking on Some questions concerning the beginning and end of human life.
This year’s Gerald Aylmer lecture will be given by Professor Maxine Berg of the University of Warwick on The Asian century: porcelain, Europe and global history.
The series will also feature inaugural lectures by five Professors at the University of York covering subjects ranging from Feminism and Islam to pollution-busting plants, technology for elderly and disabled people, and Medieval manuscripts.
Notes to editors:
- Baroness Mary Warnock chaired a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1979-84, an Advisory Committee on Animal Experiments (1979-86), and a Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization 1982-84. She was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge between 1985 and 1992.The lecture will take place on 19 October.
- Professor Hermione Lee was a Booker Prize judge in 1981, and is a regular broadcaster and reviewer. Her biography of Virginia Woolf won the 1997 British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature and she is working on a new life of Edith Wharton. The lecture will take place on 23 October.
- Paul Muldoon is Howard G.B. Clark Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2003. The lecture will take place on 31 October.
- Writer and broadcaster Jonathon Porritt is Programme Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. The lecture will take place on 15 November.
- The five inaugural lectures are: Navigating in the dark: technology for disabled and elderly people, by Professor Helen Petrie, of the Department of Computer Science, on 16 October; Feminism, Islam and human rights: some illustrations from Iran by Professor Haleh Afshar, of the Department of Politics on 30 October; Books without title pages by Professor Linne Mooney, of the Department of English and Centre for Medieval Studies, on 27 November; Taking the middle out of the Middle Ages by Professor Peter Biller, of the Department of History, on 4 December and Microbial factories and pollution-busting plants by Professor Neil Bruce, of the Department of Biology, on 11 December.
- Paul Muldoon will speak on 31 October, Professor Maxine Berg on 9 November, John Gittings on 12 October and Ingmar Persson on 15 November.
- All lectures are free and open to the public.
- For details on venues and times, please visit the public lectures website at www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/ or contact the Communications Office on 01904 432622
- Tickets for the Vice-Chancellor’s lecture can be obtained by contacting 01904 432622 or email pressoffice@york.ac.uk