“John Nash,” Ihab Hassan said to a silent and captivated room, “He is the guy Russell Crowe played in A Beautiful Mind.” A sigh of understanding swept over the auditorium.
The 84-year-old scholar managed to communicate his thoughts quite artfully to the young University crowd. Mainly he was able to explain the vain world he believes society exists in today.
His lecture, entitled The Way We Have Become, focused on modern society’s obsession with perception and appearance. Hassan discussed, “How everything in America now must seem or appear, not be.”
He explained in terms of metaphors and relations to pop culture and the recent election.
Hassan described America’s mantra as ‘appearance is everything’ which is, according to him, echoed in everything around us. Appearance is everything in politics, economics, and even the arts.
He proposed that the United States has become a cultural mistrust; that its citizens thrive on scandals, scandals of church, state, celebrity, etcetera. “Have Americans really lost the will to believe?” he asked the 75 students and faculty in the Park Hall auditorium Wednesday.
“I thought the lecture was amazing.” said Justin Smith, a senior majoring in journalism at the University of Georgia. “He really made his complex concept understandable. I thought it was extremely interesting and I’m glad I came.”
Hassan was visiting the University of Georgia as a Wilson Center Artist. Betty Jean Craig, director of the Wilson Center, described him as a personal ‘intellectual hero’. The Wilson Center Artist is an honor of intellectuals, artists and scholars in which its recipients are nominated and voted on by faculty.
This year, Stephen Corey, editor of the Georgia Review nominated Hassan. Corey described Hassan’s works as groundbreaking and inspirational and introduced him saying “I have known him for 40 years, and yesterday, we met.”
The Cairo-born literary theorist’s concept of postmodernism is internationally renowned. He simply wants society to return to a time of trust, truth and hope.
The lecture’s attendees were nothing but respectful and receptive to his speech. During a question and answer session after the lecture, one attendee inquired “But, how do we get away from this reliance on perception?” “Like this” Hassan replied.
The 84-year-old scholar managed to communicate his thoughts quite artfully to the young University crowd. Mainly he was able to explain the vain world he believes society exists in today.
His lecture, entitled The Way We Have Become, focused on modern society’s obsession with perception and appearance. Hassan discussed, “How everything in America now must seem or appear, not be.”
He explained in terms of metaphors and relations to pop culture and the recent election.
Hassan described America’s mantra as ‘appearance is everything’ which is, according to him, echoed in everything around us. Appearance is everything in politics, economics, and even the arts.
He proposed that the United States has become a cultural mistrust; that its citizens thrive on scandals, scandals of church, state, celebrity, etcetera. “Have Americans really lost the will to believe?” he asked the 75 students and faculty in the Park Hall auditorium Wednesday.
“I thought the lecture was amazing.” said Justin Smith, a senior majoring in journalism at the University of Georgia. “He really made his complex concept understandable. I thought it was extremely interesting and I’m glad I came.”
Hassan was visiting the University of Georgia as a Wilson Center Artist. Betty Jean Craig, director of the Wilson Center, described him as a personal ‘intellectual hero’. The Wilson Center Artist is an honor of intellectuals, artists and scholars in which its recipients are nominated and voted on by faculty.
This year, Stephen Corey, editor of the Georgia Review nominated Hassan. Corey described Hassan’s works as groundbreaking and inspirational and introduced him saying “I have known him for 40 years, and yesterday, we met.”
The Cairo-born literary theorist’s concept of postmodernism is internationally renowned. He simply wants society to return to a time of trust, truth and hope.
The lecture’s attendees were nothing but respectful and receptive to his speech. During a question and answer session after the lecture, one attendee inquired “But, how do we get away from this reliance on perception?” “Like this” Hassan replied.
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