The English Department
of
The University of Pittsburgh
is pleased to sponsor
A Conversation with Stanley Fish
“The Position, September 2006"
Thursday, September 14th
501 Cathedral of Learning
4-5:00 PM
A reception to follow
Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University. He was previously Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke.
Fish is one of the country’s most influential and provocative critics of language, law and literature. His writing is witty and bold; he delights in controversy; his public lectures are always events. In addition to articles written from a broad public, including regular contributions to the Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times, Professor Fish’s work includes over 200 scholarly publications. In English Studies, his books include: Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost; Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of 17th Century Literature; Is There a Text in this Class: Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority; Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies; Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change; and, most recently, How Milton Works. His current projects include an essay, “There is no Textualist Position” for the San Diego Law Review and another, “Academic Cross Dressing: How Intelligent Design Gets Its Arguments from the Left” for Harper’s Magazine.
Prof. Fish has prepared a short paper, which we will distribute at the event. His lecture is designed to engage the audience in conversation, paragraph by paragraph. We may not get to the end, he says, but we know the discussion is bound to be timely, interesting, and lively.
We are grateful for additional support from Jonathan Arac.