Chicago Humanities Festival lineup includes Northwestern faculty

EVANSTON - The 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival’s roster includes several Northwestern University notables.

Northwestern faculty members, along with nine other great thinkers, are scheduled to present on Oct. 29 the Morris and Dolores Kohl Kaplan Northwestern Day of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Each will address the festival’s larger theme, “Speed,” which speaks to the pace of life in contemporary society, the ideas and movements that accelerate — or obstruct — change and the artists and practices that force us to slow down. 

• Robert Gordon, the Stanley G. Harris Professor in the Social Sciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and author of “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” will offer a presentation based on the book. Gordon, who has been quoted widely by publications across the U.S. and internationally, argues that the economy will stall as a result of slower innovation, plateauing education, an aging population and rising inequality and debt. Gordon speaks Nov. 12 at Venue SIX10, Feinberg Theater, 610 S. Michigan Ave.

• Saul Morson, literary critic and beloved professor of Slavic languages and literature, will make the case for the slow reading of mammoth 19^th Century novels in a presentation dubbed “Slow Reading and the Russian Novel.” Morson believes that taking a long time to read Tolstoy’s masterpiece “War and Peace” has the power to change the way we see the world.

• Aymar Jean Christian is an assistant professor of communication and the creator of the independent and inclusive online television platform OpenTV, developed by artists who are queer, trans and people of color – people largely left out of TV production. Christian’s work has been published in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, among other publications.

• Lydia Barnett, an assistant professor of history, will make a presentation on the history of environmental catastrophe and global consciousness during the Enlightenment. Barnett convenes the ongoing Environmental Humanities Research Workshop at Northwestern, a group of faculty and graduate students that meets regularly to discuss current research.