Intellectual Historian Quentin Skinner to Speak at W&L on April 4 and April 6
Quentin Skinner, the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and an intellectual historian, will give two lectures at Washington and Lee University on April 4 and April 6. W&L’s Mudd Center is sponsoring both talks.
On April 4, he will speak on “How Should We Think About Freedom?” at 5:30 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library. This talk is part of the Mudd Center’s “Ethics of Citizenship” series. For more information about this series, see http://www.wlu.edu/mudd-center/programs-and-events/2015-2016-the-ethics-of-citizenship.
On April 6, Skinner will speak on “Why Shylock Loses his Case: Judicial Rhetoric in ‘The Merchant of Venice’” at 5 p.m. in the Hillel House Multipurpose Room (101). This lecture on Shakespeare is part of his weeklong residency at W&L under the auspices of the Mudd Center.
Skinner is the author of “Forensic Shakespeare” (2014), “Hobbes and Republican Liberty” (2008), and a three-volume collection of essays, “Visions of Politics” (2002). His two-volume study “The Foundations of Modern Political Thought” (1978) was listed by the New York Times Literary Supplement in 1996 as one of the 100 Most Influential Books published since World War II.
Previously the Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, he is a fellow of the British Academy and a foreign member of several other national academies including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Skinner has received the Wolfson History Prize, the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize of the British Political Studies Association and a Balzan Prize for Humanity, Peace and Fraternity Among Peoples.
