Join the 18th Century British Literature Workshop for their last event of the year, where Professor Hanson will deliver a talk on history and the figurative.
The figurative is a reservoir of uneven impressions. With an eye on figurative acculumation, Professor Hanson takes up the 18th Century notion of vibrating matter, popularized by David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, and others. Two alternative histories are bound up in this matter: one a history of habit and self-regulation and the other of criminality and dreams. It is this latter history that she might archive through the figurative, in order to see how the self-regulating model of history might crack open to show a more contingent and contested one.
Wine and refreshments will be served! RSVP to ehb254@nyu.edu.
