History, comparative literature expert to give Hilldale Lecture

Distinguished historian and comparative literature medievalist Brian Stock of the University of Toronto will present the fall 2003 Hilldale Lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State St. He will speak on “Medicine, Literature, and the History of Reading: Some Ancient Solutions and Modern Problems in the Humanities.”

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Stock will examine the problems he sees with contemporary university humanities curriculum. He is “concerned with the fragmenting of the ethical outlook, the lack of a coherent notion of the self and the dissension that has characterized recent trends in criticism.” The traditional integrated function of the humanities that dates to the Renaissance and earlier has migrated out of the academy, Stock argues. The ancient notion of “centeredness” has resurfaced in today’s interest in mind-body healing and non-western religious experience, he says.

Stock teaches history and comparative literature, specializing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In 1997, he was elected to the international chair at the Collège de France; in 2001, he was Sather Professor of Classical Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are “The Implications of Literacy” (1983), “Augustine the Reader” (1996) and “After Augustine” (2001).