What is PAL?

PAL stands for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature. “Arts” includes theater, painting, film, music, and other arts. PAL exists to encourage and promote work that places literature, theater, painting, film, and other arts in conversation with philosophy without reducing them to mere illustrations of philosophical paradigms. It seeks to foster conversation between writers and artists and scholars and critics by organizing or co-sponsoring conferences, symposia and more informal working groups.

PAL welcomes all kinds of philosophical perspectives on literature and the arts, and on questions in aesthetics and literary theory. The inspiration to start PAL came from the "Working Group on Ordinary Language Philosophy and the Aesthetic" organized by Sarah Beckwith and Toril Moi, and funded by Duke's English Department from 2007 to 2009. PAL will continue to encourage exploration of ordinary language philosophy in the tradition after Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and Stanley Cavell.

What's Happening at Duke?

See photos from the recent Cavell and A.S. Byatt events!

PAL is privileged to be able to host Realism/Modernism/Philosophy: A Symposium, with Fredric Jameson (Duke), Michael Fried (Johns Hopkins University) and Robert Pippin (University of Chicago), where these superb scholars will both present their work and engage in conversation about art, art history and philosophy. This symposium will take place on March 4th and 5th, 2010. March 4th will consist of three lectures in the Nasher Art Museum Auditorium, and March 5th will be a panel discussion with Jameson, Fried and Pippin, moderated by Toril Moi, in the Franklin Center room 240. Both events are free and open to the public.

PAL has a regular forum that will meet two or three times a semester and act as a place for informal discussions, readings, and/or presentation of work in progress. It will usually be catered and take place in the evening. Our next meting will be in January (time and place TBA) to discuss Michael Fried's epochal text "Art and Objecthood" in preparation for the Fried/Pippin/Jameson symposium on March 4 and 5. If people have time, it may also be useful to read Robert Pippin's recent essay on Fried. The readings for this meeting are now available on the Links/Texts page.

What's happening in the area?

Keep checking back for more information!