Oh the Humanities!

The Center for the Humanities at the UW has some interesting programs coming up in the next few months. Well, interesting to me, at any rate. Most of them relate to things culinary.

On 22 February we have:

Cooking Philosophies: A Chefs Debate
Forum with Harold McGee and Chef's Roundtable

A roundtable discussion with Harold McGee and Madison chefs at the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium.

The following day the theme continues with:

Playing With Food: Three Centuries of Science in the Kitchen
Humanities Without Boundaries Lecture by Harold McGee

Harold McGee will recount some of the little-known history of food preparation and its influence on the development of science, and report on his own research into such questions as: Why do French cooks insist on whipping egg whites in copper bowls? How many liters of mayonnaise can you make with one egg yolk? Can thermocouples and computers help you cook a better hamburger? And w hy does the spatter from a frying pan end up on the inside of a cook's eyeglasses?

Rounding out the topic of comestibles is a panel discussion on 25 April:

Eat Locally, Think Globally: Cosmopolitan Taste in Madison and Beyond
Rooted Cosmopolitans Forum with Rebecca Walkowitz and respondent panel

This discussion will examine the conjunction of regionalism and internationalism by focusing on matters of taste in the context of food. Professor Walkowitz will talk about how cosmopolitan culture can be both less than national (regional) and more than national (international), sometimes at the same time. We will also include a panel of respondents that will bring local restaurants, farming, and culture to the discussion.

Moving onto The Enlightenment, we have this lecture on 22 March:

How Secular Was the Enlightenment: Six Faces of Reasonable Belief, 1689-1789
Focus on the Humanities Lecture by David Sorkin

Focusing on the myth of a secular Enlightenment, David Sorkin will re-examine the relationship of the Enlightenment to religion, departing from the conventional approach that considers the attitude of canonical Enlightenment thinkers (Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Diderot, Lessing and Kant) to religion, by instead asking how thinkers in the major religious traditions (Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Judaism) dealt with the science (Newton) and philosophy of the Enlightenment (ideas of reason, natural religion, toleration). It will argue that if we wish to continue to see the Enlightenment as the fount of modern culture, then we must recognize that it was inextricably linked to religious belief.

For more info and the rest of the programs, head to the Center's calendar.