News Article


RSS Subscribe to Gonzaga University's News Service RSS Feed

Dateline: 3/3/2009

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Dale Goodwin, Director
Peter Tormey, Associate Director

See 'What Can We Learn from Shakespeare?' March 23
Interpreting Shakespeare from Different Disciplines

Gonzaga University English Associate Professor Michael Pringle and GU philosophy Assistant Professor Erik Schmidt each will discuss “What Can We Learn from Shakespeare?,” from 7-9 p.m., Monday, March 23 in the Wolff Auditorium at Gonzaga’s Jepson Center.

The event is another installment of the popular “What Can We Learn?” series co-sponsored by Gonzaga’s College of Arts and Sciences and Gonzaga philosophy Professor Wayne Pomerleau as the Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Chair of the Humanities.

Pringle will address the study of Shakespeare’s writings from a literary perspective while Schmidt will discuss what Shakespeare’s work can teach us from the philosophical viewpoint.

Schmidt and Pringle have collaborated on this topic before. Last summer, the two taught linked summer school courses at Gonzaga exploring the relation between Shakespeare’s works and morality. Last month, they made presentations at a conference in Florence, Italy, focusing on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in relation to philosophical analysis. 

This marks the fifth year of the lecture series coordinated by Professor Pomerleau. This series focuses on the current relevance and significance of the ideas from great thinkers of the past. Earlier events in this series have dealt with Socrates, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, St. Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln, and William James.

Pringle, who joined Gonzaga’s English faculty in 1999, is a specialist in Early American Literature and focused on Shakespeare for his master’s degree from Washington State University. Pringle, who earned his doctorate from WSU in 2000, is on sabbatical leave this year. 

Schmidt joined Gonzaga’s philosophy faculty in 2003 and is a tenure-track professor. He earned a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2003 and his specialty areas are moral psychology and the philosophy of art.

For more information, contact Professor Wayne Pomerleau at (509)313-6750 or via e-mail.