Linda Mayes and Helena Rutherford, of the Child Study Center at Yale University, deliver a lecture on the mechanisms of influence between children and parents in the processes of development, especially with regard to psychoanalysis.

Dr. Frank Salmon, Lecturer in the History of Art and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, delivers a lecture on the connections between the Classical architecture of antiquity and British architectural production in the eighteenth century.

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, delivers a lecture on the phenomenon of statistic decline in violence throughout human history.

In fulfilling its mission to examine the whole history of Antisemitism, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism hosts a panel discussion examining the philosophical and social origins of Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity.

Prof. Deborah Howard of Cambridge University delivers a lecture on her groundbreaking research on the acoustics of Renaissance churches and other concert venues in Venice. Intended to accompany the Franke Seminar entitled "Art and Music in Venice." Prof. Howard's lecture considers the acoustical needs of various composers and performers in the architectural spaces of Renaissance Venice. Her important research explores the performance possibilities in the various churches and concert venues of...

Prof. David Rosand, Emeritus of Columbia University, delivers a lecture on representations of music and music making by Venetian painters in the Renaissance. As a guest speaker giving a public lecture to accompany the Franke Seminar on Art and Music in Venice in the Fall of 2011, Prof. Rosand’s presentation examines the depictions of music in Venetian Renaissance painting, including personifications of music itself, musicians, concerts, and instruments in the art of Titian, Tintoretto,...

Dr. Andrew Gerber, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, delivers a lecture on the use of fMRI in the study of physchopathology and psychotherapy.

Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow in Classics at King’s College, Cambridge, delivers a lecture on depictions of Sappho in the nineteenth century America, especially with regard to the female artist in the period.

Michael Pollan, critically acclaimed author and journalist, sits down with writer Jack Hitt to discuss the former’s recent work and other topics related to food and cooking.

Prof. Peter Meineck of New York University delivers a lecture on the depiction of war trauma in Ancient Greek drama, exploring the idea of “nostos” (homecoming) and its relevance to the experience of contemporary veterans. In addition to texts by the major Greek dramatists, Prof. Meineck considers non-dramatic works from the history and philosophy of the period, as well as the history of Athenian stagecraft, as part of a culture for which the scars of war were a factor of everyday life. Prof....

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a novelist, biographer, and professor of philosophy, delivers the Franke Lecture in the Fall of 2012 on the influences of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza upon literature and the enlightenment. Goldstein challenges a cultural portrait of Spinoza as distant from aesthetic concerns, and meditates upon Spinoza’s imprint upon writers including Melville, Goethe, George Eliot, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Heine. Granted a prestigious “genius award” by the MacArthur...

Teeth Slam Poets, a spoken word poetry team at Yale University, present an evening of poems inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. The event features a guest performance by Kate Tempest, a London based spoken word artist. “Slamet” was presented as part of Shakespeare at Yale, a semester of events celebrating Shakespeare’s history and continued influence on contemporary culture. Ms. Tempest has performed extensively in Europe and the United States, and her work has received wide...

Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, delivers the Finzi-Contini Lecture in the Fall of 2011 on his experiences as a translator of Italian poetry into English. Focusing on his translations of Eugenio Montale and Giacomo Leopardi, Galassi shares his personal experiences as what he calls an "impassioned amateur" engaging in the words, poems, and literary output of others and writing in a language not one's own. In addition to his work as a publisher and...

Prof. William Barcham, Emeritus of the Fashion Institute of Technology, delivers a lecture on the production of paintings of public festivals and other civic events in Venice in the eighteenth century. Delivered as a part of the lecture series accompanying the Franke Seminar entitles, Art and Music in Venice, Prof. Barcham's lecture treats the genre of painting social and civic events in the city of Venice, such as Carnivale, religious Feast Day celebrations, and other civic rituals. View...

Celebrating the Bollingen Prize for Poetry at Yale, nearly all the living winners of this prestigious prize are brought together for a group reading sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Whitney Humanities Center. The recording begins with a brief introduction to the Bollingen program and recipients of the prize by Patricia Cannon Willis, the Elizabeth Wakeman Dwight Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library. Following her...

Terrence W. Deacon delivers a lecture on the neuroscience and development of the human capacity for language and musical perception. Prof. Deacon is the Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests lie in the field of brain development and evolution, the origins of language, and bio-cultural evolution. Many of these interests are found in his book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain (1997). His lecture...

A conversation reflecting on thirty years of Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center with Peter Brooks, Founding Director, and Founding Fellows Kai Erikson, Geoffrey Hartman, and Robert Shulman is held as part of the Whitney’s 30th Anniversary celebration. In 1981, the Whitney Humanities Center began at Yale University under the new university presidency of A. Bartlett Giamatti. For this celebration of thirty year’s growth and activity at Yale, the WHC’s founding director and three of its founding...

In this lecture, cognitive neuroscientist Jamshed Bharucha discusses the ways that music creates emotion and how these emotions work within human interactions and relationships. Professor Bharucha, who is also a classically trained violinist, has written extensively on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of music and has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health for his work. He began his academic career at Dartmouth College, where he...

Mark A. Peterson discusses Galileo’s study of mathematics in relation to the arts. Prof. Peterson argues that Galileo the mathematician, steeped in the art and literature of his day, needs to be better known, separate from his work as an astronomer. Dr. Peterson is Chair of Physics and Professor of both Mathematics and Physics at Mount Holyoke College. His research often explores the intersection of science and the humanities, history of science, as well as biophysical research. Professor...

In this discussion, Rebecca Goldstein, Harry Frankfurt, and Michael Cunningham discuss the ways in which novelists do and do not write philosophically. The panel is chaired by Amy Hungerford. The featured speakers are novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, professor of philosophy Harry Frankfurt, novelist and professor of English Michael Cunningham, and professor of English Amy Hungerford.

In this lecture, Michael Ryan discusses the relationship between animal aesthetic preferences, sexual selection, and evolutionary biology. Dr. Ryan is the Clark Hubbs Professor of Zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research involves animal behavior, focusing on mechanisms of communication involved in mate attraction and corollary evolutionary consequences.

In the first of her two tanner lectures, Rebecca Goldstein discusses the overlap and conflict between philosophy and the literary arts, and whether novels can be philosophically justified. Ms. Goldstein’s career bridges the divides between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Equally comfortable discussing physics or fiction, she is also an important voice in the current active debates between religion and science. A Koret International Book Award winner, a multiple time National...

In the second of her two Tanner lectures, Rebecca Goldstein discusses the overlap and conflict between philosophy and the literary arts, and whether novels can be philosophically justified. Ms. Goldstein’s career bridges the divides between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Equally comfortable discussing physics or fiction, she is also an important voice in the current active debates between religion and science. A Koret International Book Award winner, a multiple time National...

Danny Meyer discusses the role and concept of hospitality in the context of the restaurant industry, and how hospitality contributes to an excellent dining experience and thus to a successful restaurant business. Mr. Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, the cafes at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, Maialino, as well as Union Square Events, the...

A multi-disciplinary panel of evolutionary biologists, joined by a philosopher and an artist, discuss how and why we order and describe the natural world the way that we do now and possible alternatives. The featured speakers from Yale are Michael Donoghue, the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Jacques Gauthier, professor of geology and geophysics and curator of vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate zoology at the Peabody Museum; Richard Prum, the William...