Inaugural Lecture: Gifts of life, gifts of love
Professor Ludmilla Jordanova
18.00-19.00, Trevelyan College, Durham University
Ludmilla Jordanova will draw on her recent and current work on visual culture in both contemporary and historical settings to explore the complicated ideas around gifts. Examples will include materials generated in the context of organ transplants – “the gift of life” is a phrase often used to describe what the living patient receives. She will pay attention to stories, including fairy tales and myths, that hinge on gifts.
Her intention is to present a historically grounded, interdisciplinary account of a pervasive concept, and to use that concept to think with, not only about her chosen sources, but about scholarly practice itself.
Ludmilla Jordanova joined the University of Durham from King’s College, London where she worked for close to eight years. She has also held chairs at the Universities of Essex, York and East Anglia, and has been Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Fellow of Downing College. Her training was in the natural sciences, history and philosophy of science and art history. Her publications include: Lamarck (1984); Sexual Visions (1989); Nature Displayed (1999), History in Practice (2000, 2nd edition 2006), Defining Features (2000) and most recently The Look of the Past (2012). She is currently preparing the third edition of History in Practice and working on a book provisionally entitled Traces of Life: Portraits in Britain 1850-2015.
A drinks reception will follow the lecture.
This event is free and open to the public. Please register here.