Public Lectures

Each year, our Faculty Ambassadors will help to organize and run 4 public lectures, hosted at and live streamed from Boston College through the Psychological Humanities and Ethics Lecture Series which offer lectures and workshops that promote interdisciplinary conversations focused on human identity, suffering, and potential, with particular concern for the enduring ethical questions at the heart of human existence.

And We Shall Be Changed: Radical Ethics for the Humanistic Disciplines
<div>Many of us are familiar with Aristotle鈥檚 virtue ethics from our student years. We can call up moderation, the golden mean, even practical wisdom (phronesis) and friendship. Nevertheless, a quick tour of the Nicomachean Ethics, as well as an unjustifiably brief visit to Kant and the utilitarians, will prepare us to see what is old and what is new in the radical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Knud Ejler L酶gstrup. The priority of the other, not only in time but in importance, places the concern with self and self-actualization far into the background. No longer must we concern ourselves, with Kierkegaard, with our own purity of heart. Holiness does not belong to me, but occurs in responsiveness to the other鈥檚 suffering.</div> <div><br> <i>Please note the time difference for this event. If you anticipate attending this event in person, the event will be hosted from 5:00-6:30PM PT.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</i></div> <p><span data-rte-class="rte-temp"><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/and-we-shall-be-changed-radical-ethics-for-the-humanistic-disciplines" style="font-weight: bold;">Register</a></span></span></p> <p>Workshop made possible by the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation.<br> </p>
<p><b>Donna Orange<br /> Hybrid Lecture<br /> June 22 | 8:00-9:30PM</b></p> <p>This lecture explores the notion that holiness does not belong to me, but occurs in responsiveness to the other鈥檚 suffering.<br /> </p>
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Anger Gaslighting and Affective Injustice
<div>Clinical psychologists have treated gaslighting as a form of psychological abuse in interpersonal relationships, but the term is increasingly being used to describe manipulative tactics used in politics and culture to support large-scale social injustices like sexism and racism. What is the injury and injustice of gaslighting in this broader sense?</div> <div>聽</div> <div>Focusing on anger gaslighting as a paradigm case, Dr. Shiloh 麻豆视频入口 argues that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (an injustice that concerns emotions and affective influence). Dr. 麻豆视频入口 appeals both to contemporary scholarship on the moral psychology of anger and to a critical phenomenology of emotion to understand the moral and sociopolitical functions of anger, and to explain why anger gaslighting is a uniquely affective variety of both moral injury and a social injustice.聽</div> <div>聽</div> <p><a href="https://youtu.be/XGnkOM778pg"><span class="btn btn-default btn-maroon">Watch full lecture now</span></a></p>
<p><b>Dr. Shiloh 麻豆视频入口<br> Online Lecture<br> Watch full lecture today!</b></p> <p>If gaslighting makes its target doubt herself, anger gaslighting makes its target doubt herself about her anger. In this lecture, we will explore how anger gaslighting is a uniquely affective variety of both moral injury and a social injustice.&nbsp;<br> </p>
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Ars Vitae: A Dialogue On Psychological Humanities
<p>This lecture explores the concept of ars vitae, Latin for the art of living. It calls on ancient ways of thinking about the enduring question of how to live in order to imagine new ways of addressing our challenges.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwDIGHbmyPw"><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold">Watch the lecture</span></a></p>
<p><b>Dr.聽Elisabeth聽Lasch-Quinn<br /> Hybrid Lecture<br /> Watch the full lecture today!</b></p> <p>The lecture provides a critique of forms of self-centeredness dominant today and an argument for a new inwardness鈥攖he cultivation of an inner life鈥攄rawing on ancient wisdom, with particular attention to the insights of Plato and the Neoplatonists.<br /> </p>
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Dostoevsky for Clinicians: Murder, Madness, and the Conflicted Human Heart
<div>In his 1928 article 鈥淒ostoevsky and Parricide鈥 鈥 in which Freud calls the celebrated novelist 鈥渘ot far behind Shakespeare鈥 and declares The Brothers Karamazov 鈥渢he most magnificent novel ever written鈥 鈥 the founder of psychoanalysis draws out the deeply psychological underpinnings of Dostoevsky鈥檚 work. Honing in on the conflicted psyches put on display the novels (and the neurotic tendencies of their author), Freud unpacks the interior crises they reveal. </div> <div>聽</div> <div>Like Freud before them, participants in this 9-month Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop will explore the works of one of literature鈥檚 greatest figures in order to delve into the spiritual and psychological questions that arise from his books. Meeting from 7 to 830 pm EST on the last Monday of each month from September to May (please note that in December and May, meetings have been moved to second to last Monday to accommodate holidays), participants will examine the insights and ideas of one of history鈥檚 keenest literary psychologists.<br /> </div> <div>聽</div> <p><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/dostoevsky-for-clinicians-murder-madness-and-the-conflicted-human-heart">Register</a></span></p>
<p><b>Matthew Clemente<br /> Online Learning Group<br /> Last Monday of every month <br /> (October 30, 2023-June 24, 2024)<br /> </b></p> <p>Participants in this Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop will explore the works of one of literature鈥檚 greatest figures in order to delve into the spiritual and psychological questions that arise from his books.聽</p>
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Erring Together: Some Notes On Distortion, Art, And Others
<p>In this talk, poet and novelist Ben Lerner will consider some of the possibilities of aberrant perception 鈥 how common auditory and visual distortions, for instance, allow them to experience the constructedness and messiness of the human sensorium. What are some of the aesthetic and social possibilities opened up by hearing the limitations of their hearing or seeing the shared blindspots in their sight? What would it mean to ground the teaching of art and literature in an awareness of the ways they err together? Lerner&#39;s goal is to arrive at an optimistic reading of Niklas Luhmann鈥檚 quote that 鈥渃ommunication is improbable鈥-- to refresh the wonder before the fact that there are moments, however fleeting, of common sense.</p>
<p><b>Ben Lerner<br /> Hybrid Lecture<br /> Inquire for More Information!</b></p> <p>This talk will consider some of the possibilities of aberrant perception鈥揾ow common auditory and visual distortions, for instance, allow us to experience the constructedness and messiness of the human sensorium.<b><br /> </b></p>
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Flourishing in the Digital Age
<p>In this presentation, followed by a question-and-answer forum, Professor Tom Harrison will offer an overview of the Jubilee Centres鈥 and his own recent research investigating the impact of new and emerging digital technologies on the character and moral development of adolescents. Professor Harrison will outline some of the moral misdemeanors regularly perpetuated and/or experienced by adolescents and how these negatively impact human flourishing. Following this, Professor Harrison will explore how adolescents can be supported to develop digital-wisdom 鈥 the ability to 鈥榙o the right thing at the right time whilst using digital technologies鈥. Research is starting to show how digital-wisdom education can mitigate some of parents鈥, teachers鈥, and wider societal concerns about the impact of digital technologies on the health and well-being of adolescents growing up in the digital age.<br /> </p>
<p><b>Tom Harrison<br /> In-person Reception &amp; Hybrid Lecture<br /> March 12, 2024 |聽</b><b style="">Reception 4:30-5:30PM<br /> Lecture: 5:30-7:00PM</b></p> <p>Professor Harrison will offer an overview of recent research investigating the impact of new and emerging digital technologies on the character and moral development of adolescents, along with exploring how we might support adolescents to develop digital wisdom.<b><br /> </b></p>
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Forgiveness, Gratitude and Hope: A Positive Psychological, Philosophical and Theological Examination
<div>Developments in the relatively new field of positive psychology have focused sustained attention on character strengths and virtues, including the three at the heart of this discussion.<br /> </div> <div>聽</div> <div>Positive psychology tends to foreground the individual in cultivating character strengths; however, virtues are cultivated and sustained in communion with others. This presentation explores a key distinction between hoping-that and hoping-in. While the former describes the content of our hopes, the latter (which has its roots in Aquinas) focuses on how hope is kindled through other agents.</div> <div>聽</div> <p><b data-rte-class="rte-temp"><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/forgiveness-gratitude-and-hope-a-positive-psychological-philosophical-and-theological-examination">Register</a></span></b></p>
<p><b>Dr. Liz聽Gulliford<br /> In-Person Lecture<br /> February 21 | 4:30PM-5:30PM聽</b></p> <p>This lecture examines forgiveness, gratitude, and hope from multiple perspectives, drawing from literature in philosophy, theology, and psychology.<br /> </p>
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Guilt and Shame in the City: On the Necessities of Moral Legislation
<div>Every political community requires a certain degree of self-governance on the part of its citizens. It is impossible to rule, or even live among, those who will not rule themselves. According to Nietzsche and Freud, beneath that commonplace observation lurks an unsavory history of violence, cruelty, and fear. To become civilized, we must turn our aggressive instincts and drives against ourselves. We must learn, in other words, the pain and the pleasure of a bad conscience.聽</div> <div>聽</div> <div>In the course of our investigation, we will come upon some unsettling truths about the nature of political power and what it requires of those who are subjected to it, and those who would wield it.</div> <div>聽</div> <p><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/guilt-and-shame-in-the-city-on-the-necessities-of-moral-legislation">Register</a></span></p>
<p><b>William J. Hendel, J.D.<br /> Online Lecture<br /> March 15 | 7PM-8:30PM聽</b></p> <p>In this lecture, we will consider how guilt and shame are essential to the success of any polity, how they are formed (and sometimes reformed) both in the community and the individual, and if they are destined to make us ill.聽<br /> </p>
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Kierkegaard for Clinicians: Finitude, Despair, and the Absurdity of Hope
<div>In <i>The Denial of Death</i>, Ernest Becker examines the import that the works of the 19th-century Danish philosopher S酶ren Kierkegaard have on modern psychology. Calling Kierkegaard a psychoanalyst, he argues that the philosopher of religion saw deeper into the human psyche than most analysts today.</div> <div>聽</div> <div>Participants in this 4-month Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop, led by Professor Matthew Clemente, will meet from 7:00 to 8:30 PM EST on the third Monday of each month from September to December to examine the insights and ideas of one of history鈥檚 most formative psychologists. The workshop will entail reading Kierkegaard not as a philosopher in the classical sense but as a proto-psychotherapist, a precursor to Freud, Becker, Girard, and Lacan. Participants will trace the early understandings of such fundamental psychological concepts as anxiety, despair, and repetition to the works of Kierkegaard and will explore the concepts of absurdity, faith, mimesis, ethics, and desire. By the end of this course, participants will have an in-depth knowledge of the major works and ideas of one of modernity鈥檚 most prominent and influential thinkers.</div>
<p><b>Matthew Clemente<br /> Online Learning Group<br /> Sept. 23, Oct. 21, Nov. 18, Dec. 16, 2024 | 7:00-8:30PM</b></p> <p>Participants in this 4-month Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop will meet from 7 to 8:30 pm EST on the third Monday of each month from September to December聽(Sept. 23, Oct. 21, Nov. 18, Dec. 16) to examine the insights and ideas of one of history鈥檚 most formative psychologists, S酶ren Kierkegaard.聽</p>
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Melancholic Joy In An Age Of Despair
<p>In the most general sense, Melancholic Joy is about how to contend with the possibility that the rational response to reality is despair. Working with engaging and accessible examples, diverse expressions of poetic and literary insight, and clear philosophical arguments, Dr. Brian Treanor offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It is one that unflinchingly acknowledges both the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that counsel despair and the seemingly inexhaustible opportunities for joy and wonder that suggest the possibility of something beyond despair. The point is to see both aspects of reality clearly. Denying or dismissing the possibility of despair is a fool鈥檚 errand, first because there are legitimate reasons for despair, and second because much despair is not rooted in reasons at all, but rather in a kind of global mood or attunement.</p> <p>However, remaining insensitive to the more salutary aspects of reality is its own kind of failure-to-see, because beauty and goodness are happening everywhere, whether it is noticed or not. Dr. Treanor&#39;s goal, then, is not to argue against despair (because there are good arguments for it, and because emotionally rooted forms of despair are not vulnerable to reason at all); rather, the goal is to be trained to see the full picture, the beauty as well as the brutality, and then to cultivate habits that maximize the former while dealing with the latter.<br /> </p>
<p><b>Brian Treanor<br /> Online Workshop<br /> </b><b style="">Inquire for More Information!</b></p> <p><span style="">This event will take up philosophical and literary accounts of lived experience, focusing聽 on the ways in which we might cultivate a way of seeing and experiencing that might help to inure us against the temptation to despair.聽</span><b><br /> </b></p>
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Non-Reductive Psychological Accounts of Religious Experience
<p><span style="">Religious phenomena that include rituals and written accounts of spiritual experiences have been subject to psychological analysis for a long time. Some, like those of Freud, have been discounted as highly reductive and prejudicial while some like those of Jung have been discounted as no more than spiritual accounts in another form. The approach of William James has attracted more serious and measured consideration by scholarship interested in ways of analyzing religious phenomena using psychological tools. Dr. Ariel Glucklich&#39;s approach since the mid-1990s has been to simplify the task by focusing on religious phenomena that are both embodied and basic. By basic, he refers to affect-based events. This has included a study of the uses of pain in religious life and more recently, the uses of pleasure (both embodied and mental). The descriptive component of this work is both rich and simple: there is a multitude of examples in religious life for voluntary and self-inflicted pain geared to the production of altered states of consciousness. There are just as many examples of the use of pleasure, both discursive and ritual, in religious documents and in anthropological descriptions.</span><br /> </p>
<p><b>Ariel Glucklich<br /> Hybrid Lecture<br /> Inquire for More Information!<br /> </b></p> <p>This lecture will explore psychoanalytic understandings of religious phenomena.<br /> </p>
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Practical Wisdom in the Professions
<p>In today&#39;s rapidly evolving world, the demand for ethical decision-making and wise judgment has never been more crucial. This course offers a comprehensive exploration of practical wisdom, or phronesis, within professional practice. Throughout this course, Kristj谩n Kristj谩nsson, Ph.D. will delve into five key units to provide a holistic understanding of practical wisdom in professional practice with a sound philosophical basis that has been refined through well over a decade of empirical research.<br /> </p>
<p><b>Kristja虂n Kristja虂nsson<br /> Online Workshop<br /> Friday, June 7, 2024 | 10:00AM-1:00PM<br /> </b></p> <p>This course offers a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in professional ethics, foregrounding the idea of practical wisdom (phronesis) as excellence in ethical decision-making.<b><br /> </b></p>
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Social Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice
<div>While many psychosocial theorists have drawn on psychoanalysis to explore conscious and unconscious connections between the psychic and the social, most such efforts have been in the realm of 鈥渁pplied psychoanalysis,鈥 that is, the exploration of unconscious process in group relations, institutions, cultures, historical eras. Few, but increasingly more psychosocial psychoanalytic writers are taking up how socially shaped unconscious processes emerge and are worked with in the clinic and in institutions.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>In this talk, Dr. Lynne Layton reviews some of the psychosocial psychoanalytic theory that has informed clinical work, including the work of Fanon, Fromm, liberation psychologists, critical psychologists, psychoanalytic feminist theorists, and critical race theorists. Her focus is on how concepts that bridge the psychic and the social, without reducing one to the other, have found their way into clinical theory and practice.&nbsp;<br> </div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <p><b data-rte-class="rte-temp"><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/social-psychoanalysis-theory-and-practice">Register</a></span></b></p>
<p><b>Dr. Lynne Layton<br /> Hybrid Lecture<br /> April 21 | 10:45AM-12:15PM聽</b></p> <p>This presentation speaks to current social psychoanalytic theory and practice and offers contributions from those realms to the broader project of theorizing the psychosocial in this historical and sociopolitical moment.<br /> </p>
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The Hermeneutics of Attention
<p>Drawing on recent work in the history of science and technology, Professor Burnett will review the changing understanding of human attention in the modern period, in an effort to draw out a distinction between &#34;instrumentalizing&#34; theories of human attentional response (on the one hand) and &#34;irreducible&#34; treatments of the same dynamics/phenomena (on the other). The aim of the presentation will be to contextualize and critique the explosive growth of a suite of industries that currently engage in what can best be called &#34;human fracking&#34;鈥攖he extraction of value from individuals and populations through the wholesale commodification of the human capacity to care.<br /> </p>
<p><b>D. Graham Burnett<br> Hybrid Lecture<br> Inquire for More Information!</b></p> <p><span style="font-family: adobe-clean, &quot;Source Sans Pro&quot;, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Roboto, Ubuntu, &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;, &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;, sans-serif;">The aim of the presentation will be to contextualize and critique the explosive growth of a suite of industries that currently engage in what can best be called &quot;human fracking&quot;鈥攖he extraction of value from individuals and populations through the wholesale commodification of the human capacity to care.</span><b><br> </b></p>
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There is No Place For Us: Working and Homelessness in America
<p>In this talk based on his forthcoming book &#34;There Is No Place for Us,&#34; Brian Goldstone recounts the experiences of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children鈥攁nd each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation鈥檚 鈥渨orking homeless.鈥 In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success鈥攐r at least stability鈥攖here is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents,<br /> low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People working full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America鈥檚 booming聽cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. Families are being聽pushed into homelessness not by a failing economy but a聽thriving聽one.</p> <p>Through a series of narrative portraits, this talk examines the human cost of housing insecurity, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are America鈥檚 hidden homeless: omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive crisis.</p>
<p><b>Brian Goldstone<br /> Lecture<br /> October 24, 2024 | 8:00-9:30PM</b></p> <p>Through the stories of five families deprived of stable housing in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city, this talk examines a new and troubling phenomenon鈥攖he dramatic rise of the 鈥渨orking homeless鈥 in America.<br /> </p>
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Unjustifying Pain: Levinas鈥檚 Philosophy of Useless Suffering
<div>Levinas鈥檚 philosophy provides a remarkably focused and prolonged attempt to present a singular idea. The suffering of the other person, he argues, renders me responsible without qualification, evasion, or limitation. Patterned after medical models for healing, the language surrounding suffering has been dominated by attempts to comprehend the cause and purpose of suffering. Healing, in medicine, is often maximized by comprehensive knowledge of the injury. Levinas resists this model, and psychologists who read his work find themselves torn between two different worlds.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>This seminar takes its orientation from Levinas鈥檚 article 鈥淯seless Suffering,鈥 in which Levinas makes the striking claim that suffering can be 鈥渕eaningful in me, useless in the other.鈥<br> </div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <p><span class="btn btn-default btn-gold"><b><a href="https://bostoncollege-lsoe.catalog.instructure.com/browse/pce/courses/unjustifying-pain-levinass-philosophy-of-useless-suffering">Register</a></b></span><b><br> </b>&nbsp;</p> <p><i>Workshop made possible by the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation</i></p>
<p><b>Eric Severson<br /> Online Workshop<br /> June 9 | 1:00PM-4:00PM聽</b></p> <p>This seminar provides a psychologically-framed exegesis of Emmanuel Levinas鈥檚 article 鈥淯seless Suffering,鈥 in which he suggests that suffering can be 鈥渕eaningful in me, useless in the other.鈥<br /> </p>
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