The Mary Flexner Lectureship
Alfred North Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas, I.A. Richards' The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Erwin Panofsky's Studies in Iconology and Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending are among the very influential books that have emerged from Bryn Mawr College's Mary Flexner Lecture Series.
Established in honor of Mary Flexner, a Bryn Mawr graduate of the class of 1895, the Lectureship has brought some of the world's best-known humanists to campus. The pioneering Egyptologist James H. Breasted gave the first series of Mary Flexner Lectures in 1928-29, followed in later years by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Arnold Toynbee, Isaiah Berlin, Paul Henry Lang, Douglas Cooper, Natalie Zemon Davis and Harold Bloom, among others.
Holders of the Mary Flexner Lecturership typically give a series of talks that introduce their unique scholarship and present new chapters or developments in that work. While in residence, they often lead seminars or discussions with undergraduate and graduate students. Lecturers publish their scholarship with Harvard University Press.
Flexner Lectureship News and Blog Posts
“[the college news is] great”: An Intimate Sojourn with Judith Butler
By Maddy Court ’12 and Mary Zaborskis ’12 Originally published in the college news “I swim every day, I drink good Italian wines, I have a network of friends, many of whom are not in...
Judith Butler’s Flexner Lectureship Inspires Bryn Mawr’s Intellectual Com...
For many at Bryn Mawr, Judith Butler's Flexner Lectureship was a prime example of the excitement of belonging to a community focused on intellectual enterprise. The eminent philosopher and crit...
Occupy/Theory
In my last post, I put forth a few questions about what Butlers formulation of ethical obligations and the right to appear could imply for a society in which large segments of the population are s...
Academic Alliances
When I began this blogging journey back in July, I could not have anticipated how dynamic the conversations we’ve had in this digital realm would be. Looking over my own entries, it’s exciting ...
Seating Information
for three public lectures
Join the Discussion
in our online book club
The 2011 Flexner Lectures by Judith Butler: Bodies in Alliance
Monday, November 7, 7:30 p.m.
"Gender Politics and the Right to Appear"
Monday, November 14, 7:30 p.m.
"Bodies in Alliance & the Politics of the Street"
Monday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.
"Toward an Ethics of Co-Habitation"
2011 Flexner Lecturer:
Judith Butler