Lecture location: 19 Washington Square North, Events Space
To attend, please RVSP to 19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu
The NYU Abu Dhabi Institute is a major hub of intellectual and creative activity, cutting-edge research, and higher education. Its mission is advanced in the form of public program, topic-focused workshops, and multi-year research grants. Beginning in 2010, seven projects have been selected to receive research grants that will be instrumental in establishing NYUAD as a major research institution known for its creative and ambitious scholarship. This series is a standing program the NYUAD Institute in New York, which will regularly host presentations and seminars about the research initiatives at the NYUAD Institute and foster connections between research at the NYU campuses in New York and Abu Dhabi.
Spring 2012 Events
New Faces from Egypt: Hellenistic Panel Paintings and Their European Consequence *
April 19, 2012 | 7:00-8:30 PM
RVSP
* Location: This event will take place at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, at 1 East 78th Street
Jas' Elsner Humfrey Payne Senior Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University
Thomas Mathews John Langeloth Loeb Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, NYUNY
Among the Greeks and Romans, the most highly esteemed paintings were executed on framed wooden panels. So valued were they that lawyers distinguished the worth of the painting from the worth of the board. Due to the perishability of wood, this great body of ancient painting has remained a lost chapter in the history of art. However, a new project directed by Thomas F. Mathews has assembled a corpus of over sixty panels, complete or fragmentary, mostly from the first to third centuries CE, from sites in Egypt, languishing unstudied in museum basements across the world. These works, preserved by the sands of Egypt, offer a remarkable window into pagan religious production both before the rise of Christianity and contemporaneously with it. This joint discussion by Profesors Mathews and Elsner will explore how the pagan panels pose many of the same problems both philosophically and in terms of cultic usage, demonstrating models which were appropriated by Christian culture as well as patterns of imagery which were specifically rejected.
In collaboration with the Institute of Fine Arts, NYUNY
Ethics and Aesthetics of Early Islamic Arabia: Translating the Sayings, Sermons and Teachings of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib
May 10, 2012 | 6:30 PM
Tahera Qutbuddin Associate Professor of Arabic Literature,The University of Chicago
'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shia imam and fourth Sunni caliph, was an acknowledged master of Arabic eloquence and a renowned sage of Islamic wisdom. Al-Qadi al-Quda'i's Treasury of Virtues and the One Hundred Proverbs ascribed to al-Jahiz are two major compilations of the sayings, sermons, and teachings attributed to him. Qutbuddin will discuss the literary and historical significance of these works, and the goals and challenges of her translation.
In collaboration with the Library for Arabic Literature, NYUAD
Principle Investigator: Philip Kennedy Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Comparative Literature, NYUAD
Fall 2011 Events
How Reading Works
November 8, 2011 | 6:30-8:00 PM
Stanislas Dehaene Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit; Professor at the Collège de France, chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology
How does our brain learn to read? What allows us to decipher written characters, a cultural feat that could not be anticipated during our evolution? By comparing literate and illiterate brains, brain imaging experiments have begun to shed light on these issues. Learning to read transforms and enhances our brain circuits for vision, motor control, and language. However, our primate brain architecture also imposes strong constraints on reading and writing systems, explaining for instance why many young readers confuse left and right. This lecture will discuss what conclusions can be drawn from this research about learning and education.
Co-sponsored by The Neuroscience of Language Laboratory
Principle Investigator: Alec Marantz Professor of Linguistics and Psychology, NYU
