ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Creativity is often cited as a privileged defining trait of human beings. This seminar seeks to explore the relationship between creativity and the human as expressed through literature and the arts. Encouraging a wide variety of interpretations and approaches, possible papers might focus on the creation of Humankind, human creativity and creations, and the role of creativity itself in creating the human. The seminar, while exploring the edges of creativity’s possible defining presence in the human, might raise questions such as: Is creativity specific to the human? Does creativity bridge the human to the divine? Can creativity exist in the absence of the human? Can the human exist in the absence of creativity? Is the human at risk in creativity? If creativity has an opposite, what would be its implications for the human?

Friday, March 24

Cora Monroe, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
“The Unhuman Inhumanity of Creativity: Marie NDiaye’s ‘La Naufragée’”
Joseph Ricapito, Louisiana State University
“Cervantes Bridges the Gap between the Printed Word and Creativity
Aneel Raina, Panjab University
The Human in Bulle Shah’s Poetry”
Changhua Zou, Independent Scholar
“‘Poetry-Writing’ in Non-Communicable Language in Art Poetry and ‘Language Speaking Purely in Poetry’ of Heidegger”

Saturday, March 25

Robert Cowan, Independent Scholar
“Correcting Brahma’s Sin: Schopenhauer v. Nietzsche”
Justin Hayes, Yale University/Quinnipiac University
“‘Bloomin’ Buzzin’ Confusion’: Jazz and Contemporary Physics”
Rhett McNeil, Penn State
“The Infinite Series in Language and Image: Foucault, Magritte, and Borges”
Donna Robertson, Governors State University
“The Question of Dichotomy in Creativity and Destruction”

Sunday, March 26

Ming Gu, Rhodes College
“The Divine and Human Creativity in Literature and Art”
Gülizar Çuhaci, T.C. Maltepe University
“Human creating the “human” in the digital age”
Neil Pischner, State University of New York at Albany
“The Creative Machine of Raymond Roussel/ Thug Rate of My Sheen Offer Man Route Sell”