主题： Recent American Rhetorical Criticism
主讲人： Barry Brummett（德克萨斯大学、教授）
时间：2017年6月19日下午1：00—2：00
地点：校本部C512室
主办：yl34511线路中心
分类：yl34511线路中心语言文化与世界文明系列讲座（九）
内容简介：The lecture provides a brief history of different attitudes toward rhetorical criticism, and how they have changed as cultural conditions have changed. I argue that criticism today must be text centered. A number of critical methods are briefly reviewed, including metaphoric, psychoanalytic, fantasy theme, and narrative criticism, to mention a few.
主讲人简介：Barry Brummett，美国著名修辞学家、德克萨斯大学（奥斯丁）传播学系系主任、Charles Sapp 传播学百年教授、yl34511线路中心欢迎修辞批评研究中心名誉主任。主要研究领域包括修辞理论与修辞批评、修辞哲学、通俗文化修辞研究、伯克修辞学理论与方法、传媒批评。
主题： Another Chinese Invention: Modern Western Music and Cu Ziyu
主讲人：Peter Simpson（纽约城市大学、教授）
时间：2017年6月19日下午2：00—3：00
地点：校本部C512室
主办：yl34511线路中心
分类：yl34511线路中心语言文化与世界文明系列讲座（十）
内容简介：Modern Western music, and accordingly most world music these days, uses a tuning system called Equal Temperament. This system is standard for the piano or any instrument with fixed notes (e.g. the guitar), and in it the interval between every semitone is equal. As a result only the octave is a pure harmony, or an interval expressible as a small number ratio (in this case 2:1). All other intervals, as the fifth (3:2), the fourth (4:3), and the major and minor thirds (5:4, 6:5), are all slightly flat or sharp, or all out of tune.
The problem is that no number of pure intervals, when added together, will add up to an octave (no multiple of 3:2 etc. will produce a multiple of 2:1). So if, say, the key of C on the piano has all its sub-octave intervals pure (semitones, tones, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths), then some of the intervals in the key, say, of D or F# will sound so out of tune they will howl like wolves. Attempts to temper or adjust pure intervals to eliminate the 'wolf' intervals and still have reasonably sounding music were many, and in the end only equal temperament proved satisfactory.
The mathematical technique for tuning instruments to equal temperament (essentially finding the twelfth root of 2) is first credited in the West to the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620). But it was discovered slightly earlier in China by Zhu Zaiyu (1536-1611), whose interest in equal temperament may have had to do with the importance of bells (a series of which is like a keyboard) in Chinese ritual. It is, however, matter of dispute whether Stevin could in any way have been dependent, through European traders, on information about Zhu's work. Nevertheless temporal priority seems to belong to Zhu. China beats the West again.
主讲人简介： Peter Simpson教授，哲学博士，主要研究领域为：古代和中世纪哲学、伦理学及政治哲学，目前主要的研究课题是亚里士多德的伦理学，其代表作有：
Goodness and Nature: A Defense of Ethical Naturalism (Nijhoff, 1987) (2005 online version available here) For a new supplement to Goodness and Nature, 2005 click here.
The Politics of Aristotle, Translated with introduction, analysis, and notes (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle, (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
On Karol Wojtyla (Wadsworth, 2001)
Vices, Virtues, and Consequences (Catholic University of America Press, 2001)
主题： From the Greeks to Google: How the Alphabet Has Shaped the Western View of the World
主讲人： Laurence de Looze（西安大略大学、教授）
时间：2017年6月19日下午3：00—4：00
地点：校本部C512室
主办：yl34511线路中心
分类：yl34511线路中心语言文化与世界文明系列讲座（十一）
内容简介：There are principally two great writing systems in operation in the world today: character writing (of which Chinese is the great example) and the alphabetic writing that characterizes non-Asian areas of the world. This talk looks at Western attitudes to alphabetic and examines the ways in which the alphabet has conditioned the Western view of the world. After glancing briefly at the ancient Greek alphabet, which was seen as comprising the elements that made up the cosmos, we will move to the Latin/Roman alphabet. We will see how the Latin letters were Christianized during the Middle Ages and used to express a theological view. With the Renaissance of the 16th century we will observe how the interest in Antiquity and the rise of printed books altered the view of the alphabet. Letters continued to be seen as a window on the world, but now they expressed the secularized qualities of social order and balance and reason. As we move through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, we will see how Western culture consistently used the alphabet as a lens for interpreting itself and foreign cultures. The talk will conclude with a brief consideration of "asemic" writing – that is, writing that appears to be letters but frustrates any attempt to decipher meaning.
主讲人简介：Laurence de Looze，西安大略大学比较文学系教授，曾在波士顿大学、哈佛大学、法国布洛克大学等世界名校任教，主要研究兴趣包括：中世纪和文艺复兴时期的文化（包括法语、冰岛语、英语、西班牙语、拉丁语和意大利语）、文本理论、书写史、文学理论和比较文学。在相关领域发表30多篇有影响力的研究论文，受多部论文集之邀撰写数十篇研究论文，翻译作品4部，发表文学作品14篇，近期发表的论文有：
"An Atheist in Rome." The New England Review 36 (2015): 111-45.
"The Piano is Always There: A Story of Lisbon." The New England Review 35 (2015): 185-98.
