Annual Invitational Lecture: Verity Platt

This year's Annual Invitational Lecture of the Society for the Humanities will be delivered by Verity Platt (Professor in the Departments of Classics and History of Art & Visual Studies, College of Arts & Sciences) on Wednesday, February 15 at 5 pm in the AD White House Guerlac Room. 

“The Sentient Sponge: Between Natural History, Art History, and Philosophy”

Exploring how physical artifacts played an active role in the ancient production of knowledge, this lecture focuses on a rather unexpected object that was ascribed epistemic value in antiquity: the humble sponge. As naturally-formed products of the deep, sea sponges helped thinkers across a wide variety of literary genres and philosophical positions to formulate relations between matter and mind, perception and knowledge, and reality and representation. In the history of art (and especially in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History), the sponge was even hailed as a co-creator of images that transcended Platonic ontologies of representation to attain a form of visual “truth”, offering an ecology of ancient art that speaks to contemporary sensitivities to object-oriented and nonhuman modes of becoming.

Registration not required. Free and open to the public. Reception to follow the lecture. 

Image: 
Christine Elfman
Fossil, Glass Sponge (2022)
Faded lichen dye on paper (anthotype)
20x16 inches
Courtesy of the artist and EUQINOM Gallery