The Bishop John Fletcher Hurst Philosophy Lecture was initiated by the Department of Philosophy and Religion and named for the founder of American University, who was himself a philosopher. Offered annually in the spring, it brings to the American University campus some of the most distinguished thinkers from this country and abroad. As a result, our students have immediate contact with those shaping philosophical theory in many fields. The department has consistently invited lecturers who are working on the frontiers of contemporary thought and who are relevant to many other disciplines, including aesthetics, the social and natural sciences, history, literature, ethics and the philosophy of religion. Click here for a list of past lecturers.
49th Annual Bishop Hurst Lecture
Spring 2008 BrochureThis year's lecture entitled
"The Policing of Race Mixing and the Birth of Biopower"
will be presented byDr. Robert Bernasconi
Moss Professor of Philosophy, University of MemphisWednesday, April 9, 2008
Mary Graydon Center 4-5
2:15pm
Robert L. Bernasconi is Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. He has written extensively on nineteenth and twentieth-century continental philosophy as well as on themes in the critical philosophy of race.
Dr. Bernasconi is the author of The Question of Language in Heidegger's History of Being (1985), Heidegger in Question (1993), and How to Read Sartre (2007). He recently co-edited The Idea of Race (2000, with Tommy Lott), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (2002, with Simon Critchley) and Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy (2003, with Sybol Cook).
Dr. Bernasconi received his BA and PhD degrees from Sussex University in England.
current lecture