Duke's Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature
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.
Where is PAL?
PAL is located in Bay 5 of Smith Warehouse on Duke University's Campus. Click HERE for directions.
What is the History of PAL?
In 2007/08 the Working Group On Ordinary Language Philosophy and the Aesthetic , organized events with Tim Gould (Denver Metropolitan University); Nancy Bauer (Tufts University) and Sandra Laugier (University of Amiens, France), and Richard Fleming (Bucknell University). In 2008/09, the Working Group decided to focus on Wittgenstein, and invited Professor Fleming, the author of First Word Philosophy: Wittgenstein-Austin-Cavell and co-editor of The Senses of Stanley Cavell, to return to Duke to give three week-end long seminars entitled "Philosophical Investigations Remark by Remark." See photos of the final party HERE. This was the very beginning of the center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke University, which became official in the Fall of 2010.