The Center for the Study of Transformative Lives will host novelists Jamaica Kincaid, Colum McCann, and Salman Rushdie, as well as biographers and New York Times Ethicist and NYU Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, as part of its Spring Event Series.
New York University’s Center for the Study of Transformative Lives will co-host novelists Jamaica Kincaid, Colum McCann, and Salman Rushdie, as well as biographers and New York Times Ethicist and NYU Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, as part of its Spring Event Series.
The events on March 31 and April 26 are free and open to the public. Those on April 27, part of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival, will include a ticket charge. Registration is required for all programs. For more information, please email transformative.lives@nyu.edu or call 212.998.4291.
March 31, 7 p.m.: The Life and Work of Albert Camus, with Elizabeth Hawes
Elizabeth Hawes, author of the recent biography Camus, A Romance, discusses her pursuit of Camus and his impact on his readers.
Co-hosted with PEN America.
NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, 20 Cooper Square, 2nd Floor (between 5th and 6th Sts.)
April 26, 6 p.m.: Exiles: A Portrait of Mid-20th Century Intellectual Diaspora
What do the last century’s most gifted refugees—Hannah Arendt, Stefan Zweig, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Arthur Koestler, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin—have to teach us about the trials and frequent triumphs of those fleeing political terror? Their biographers weigh in.
With Evelyn Barish on Paul De Man; George Prochnik on Stefan Zweig; Michael Scammel on Alexander Solzhenitsyn; and Richard Wolin on Martin Heidegger. Moderated by Anne Heller.
Co-hosted with the NYU Biography Seminar, New York Institute for the Humanities, and PEN World Voices.
NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, 16 Cooper Square (between 5th and 6th Sts.)
April 27, 6 p.m.: Ex-Pats: Life and Letters in a New World
What does it mean for writers to be uprooted from their birthland and change their language? How do they adapt to life in America? Negotiating between two cultures creates a tension that, for the most nimble, can have a galvanizing effect, as leading expat authors explore in this panel.
With Kwame Anthony Appiah, Marlon James, Jamaica Kincaid, Valeria Luiselli, and Colum McCann. Moderated by Eric Banks.
Co-hosted with the NYU Biography Seminar, New York Institute for the Humanities, and PEN World Voices.
Instituto Cervantes, 211 East 49th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Aves.)
April 27, 8 p.m.: In Conversation—Barbara Goldsmith and Salman Rushdie
"When Does an Adopted Home Become Home?"
Born in India and living in the United States, Salman Rushdie, a Distinguished Writer in Residents at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, blends two cultures into a single language without borders. The PEN World Voices Festival founder is interviewed by acclaimed author Barbara Goldsmith.
Co-hosted with the NYU Biography Seminar, New York Institute for the Humanities, and PEN World Voices.
NYU’s School of Law, Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South (between MacDougal and Sullivan Sts.)
EDITOR’S NOTE:
The Center for the Study of Transformative Lives at New York University fosters research, teaching, and education centering on the lives of exemplary individuals whose dedication, genius, and moral vision helped shape the course of human events. The work of the Center is motivated by the conviction that the example of a great and good life, studied in depth and at length, can become a guiding influence on people’s lives today as they confront their own choices, decisions, and opportunities. Focusing on well-known and less-well-known figures from the present and the past, students and researchers study inspiring individuals in the context of their times and the circles in which they moved, using them as powerful lenses through which to view history and understand societal change. For more, go to: http://www.transformativelives.org/.