Timothy Knepper – Page 34 – The Comparison Project

2015-03-21

04/16/2015: Love Is to Renounce Naming the Beloved: Muslim Mystic al-Rabi’a and Her Teaching of the Ineffable

Tamara Albertini,
Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Undergraduate Certificate of Islamic Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

April 16, 7 p.m., Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

The female Muslim mystic Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801) is widely considered one of the most influential mystics of Sufism, as she was primarily responsible for redirecting the spirit of early Sufism away from the path of austere asceticism and toward the path of divine love. Dr. Albertini’s illustrated lecture will begin by introducing Sufism in general and Rabi’a in particular, after which she will explore Rabi’a’s mystical poetry with respect to her struggle to express an ineffable love for Allah.

Dr. Tamara Albertini was raised in North Africa where she learned Arabic and attended Qur’anic classes. Later, she obtained a Lic.phil. from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and a Dr.phil. from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Germany) in Islamic and Renaissance studies. Her many publications aim at reintroducing the vigor and vision of Muslim intellectual contributions from the classical period. Since 9/11, she speaks widely on Islamic Fundamentalism, Women and Islam, and Islamic Law.

2015-02-13

02/26/2015: Kabbalah, Language, and Transcendental Mysteries

Steven Katz,
Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair of Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Boston University
Feb. 26, 7 p.m., Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

The Jewish mystical tradition, like all mystical traditions, has had to deal with the issue of language and the communication of mystical experience. In responding to this basic issue, Jewish mystics did not emphasize ineffability. Instead, they answered the conceptual matters raised by the challenge of language by creating a theology that drew on the material in, and the interpretation of, the Hebrew Bible.

Dr. Katz serves on the Academic Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, chairs the Holocaust Commission of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and serves as Academic Adviser to the 31 countries that make up the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. He has published numerous works on the Holocaust and Jewish philosophy as well as five seminal books on comparative mysticism all from Oxford University Press.

Listen to audio of Katz’s lecture:

2015-02-05

02/12/2015: The Sayings and Missayings of Samuel Beckett

Craig Owens, Associate Professor of English, Drake University
February 12, 7:00 p.m., Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

The narrators of Samuel Beckett’s novels and the characters in his plays fill their worlds with words. In his final trilogy of novels, Nowhow On, these utterances become intensely self-reflective, so much so that they are about uttering itself, the signifier’s inability to bear transparently its signified content. Ineffability, here, emerges not as the failure of a particular kind of signified content, but as the failure of signifiers themselves ever to refer to an extra-symbolic signified in the first place.

Craig N. Owens teaches modern drama, playwriting, modern Irish and British literature, and discourse and language theory. He has directed and performed in many of Beckett’s plays.

Listen to audio of Owen’s lecture and a response from Gereon Kopf, Professor of Religion, Luther College

2014-10-21

11/07/2014: Exhibitions on Art and Ineffability

Drake University’s Comparison Project hosts two exhibitions on art and ineffability during the month of November with opening events on Friday, November 7. The opening events feature poetic and musical performances of ineffability from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in Weeks Gallery, a gallery talk on contemporary abstract painting as a form of wordless communication at 6:15 p.m., and a concert by the jazz sax quartet New Third Stream Quartet at 7:30 p.m. in Sheslow Auditorium.

Everday Abstraction in the Anderson Gallery is an exhibition of contemporary abstract painting as a form of wordless communication. It features the paintings of five artists from across the United States. It will be on view through January 23, 2015. Visit the Anderson Gallery website for more information.

Weeks Gallery will display works by various artists, all of whom are responding to the theme of “ineffability” through painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media projects. The exhibition entitled, Performing Ineffability: Art, Poetry, Music will remain on display through the end of November. An associated art installation in Scott Chapel will be on display from November 5 to 7.

Two of the poet-artists involved in the exhibition opening are also participating in events on Thursday, November 6. At 6:00 p.m. Christopher Janke lectures on ineffability in contemporary poetry, and at 7:30 p.m. Douglas Kearney performs from his recent work Patter and hosts readings from Drake’s Coalition of Black Students and Des Moines’s Run DSM. Both poetry events will be held in the Cowles Library Reading Room.

All events are free and open to the public.

Photos from the exhibition opening