Nehamas, Alexander. "Plato's Pop Culture Problem, and Ours." NEW YORK TIMES August 29, 2010.

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.

The case in question is the 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a California law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005, that imposed fines on stores that sell video games featuring “sexual and heinous violence” to minors. The issue is an old one: one side argues that video games shouldn’t receive First Amendment protection since exposure to violence in the media is likely to cause increased aggression or violence in real life. The other side counters that the evidence shows nothing more than a correlation between the games and actual violence. In their book “Grand Theft Childhood,” the authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson of Harvard Medical School argue that this causal claim is only the result of “bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports.”

The issue, which at first glance seems so contemporary, actually predates the pixel by more than two millennia. In fact, an earlier version of the dispute may be found in “The Republic,” in which Plato shockingly excludes Homer and the great tragic dramatists from the ideal society he describes in that work.

Could Plato, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., possibly have anything to say about today’s electronic media? As it turns out, yes, It is characteristic of philosophy that even its most abstruse and apparently irrelevant ideas, suitably interpreted, can sometimes acquire an unexpected immediacy. And while philosophy doesn’t always provide clear answers to our questions, it often reveals what exactly it is that we are asking. . . .

Read the rest here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/platos-pop-culture-problem-and-ours/.

Irwin, William. "Fancy Taking a Pop?" THE PHILOSOPHERS' MAGAZINE March 22, 2010.

Ten years have passed since the publication of Seinfeld and Philosophy. That book led to the Simpsons and Philosophy, which led to The Matrix and Philosophy, which has led to an ever-expanding list of books that take philosophy to the general public by discussing the subject in terms of pop culture. Despite the success of this mission, misperceptions and misdirected criticisms of the “and Philosophy” books persist. While I’ve dealt with nearly all of the criticisms before, they seem to warrant address again. (I can only speak for the books that I edited during my time with Open Court and the books in my current series with Blackwell.) Some philosophers are concerned that the “and Philosophy” books will hurt the public perception of philosophy, that the books misrepresent philosophy as trivial and frivolous. This fear is misplaced. Philosophy has had a public relations problem for a few centuries now, but it has nothing to do with philosophy being trivial or frivolous. Rather, people mistakenly think philosophy is some dry, dusty, irrelevant academic subject taught by bearded professors in tweed jackets with suede patches on the elbows. Books in my series aim to correct that misperception by showing people how philosophy is relevant. Philosophy can and should guide our lives. And there is no reason to think that the public perception of philosophy is changing to regard it as a frivolous discipline as a result of these books. Sometimes people think that philosophy is just plain bullshit, but that has nothing to do with “and Philosophy” books. In fact these books have convinced lots of people that philosophy is not bullshit by educating them about what philosophy actually is. The audience for these books is the general public. Sadly, most students go through four years of college without taking a single philosophy course, and the result is a philosophically illiterate society. The aim of these books, then, is to take philosophy to people who might not otherwise be exposed to philosophy. People think better and more critically about things they like and are interested in, whether it be sports, movies, rap music, whatever. The hope is that if we can get them to think philosophically about these things they will come to see the value of philosophy in itself. To paraphrase a British philosopher, we use a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1131.

"Appropriating the Past: the Uses and Abuses of Cultural Heritage," Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage, Durham University, July 6-8, 2009.

This two-day conference should be of wide appeal to archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, lawyers and others with an interest in the ethical principles and problems associated with the concept of cultural heritage. The meeting will open with four invited lectures to introduce the conference theme and relate it to the specific aims and methods of the new Centre. In recent years, the right of archaeologists to erect ‘Keep Out' signs around what they conceive of as the archaeological record has come under increasing challenge from other interest groups which may assert equal or superior rights to access, utilise and manage those remains, or to determine their significance. So a decorated bronze vessel which for an archaeologist is primarily a source of information to be extracted by academically approved methods may be, to other eyes, a sacred or tabooed object, an anchor of social or cultural identity, a work of art, or a legitimate source of hard cash. These different perceptions correspond to different forms of appropriating the past, and they can give rise to sharp practical conflicts. This conference will explore some of the key ethical issues raised by the competing modes in which archaeologists and others appropriate the past. These include: rights to interpret the past and tell stories about it; handling the sacred; the concept and ethics of birthright; local versus national versus international rights over sites, antiquities and artefacts; roles and responsibilities of museums; duties/rights of international intervention to defend antiquities; study and custodianship of human remains; looting and the antiquities trade; the economic exploitation of sites and resources; duties of preservation for future generations; the use of destructive research techniques; the roles of codes of ethics and of legal frameworks. Keynote Speakers: Professor James O. Young (Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada) Professor Robert Layton (Anthropology, Durham University, UK) Dr John Curtis OBE (Keeper, Dept. of Middle East, British Museum, UK) Ms Janet Ulph (Law, Durham University, UK). Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.dur.ac.uk/cech/conferences/appropriatingthepast/.

"Culture and Media: Local and Global Aspects," Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University, May 22-23, 2009.

Even though networking of the world by means of various media is obvious, the impact of this process is rather ambiguous. On the one hand, the media seem to be shaping new transnational global culture, where there is "no sense of place" (J. Meyrowitz) and the wide cultural variety seems to be getting unified into global media culture. On the other hand, global media evokes local reactions, interpretations and resistance to the global culture. This ambiguity raises questions about the media itself: what are they, powerful tools of cultural transmission, or means of constructing culture? The aim of the conference is to contribute to the analysis of interconnections between media and culture both on the global and on the local level. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following: * The impact of the media on social life * Media and the construction of identity (nationality, ethnicity, gender) * Mediatization of politics, everyday life and the public sphere * Place of media theorizing in contemporary discourse of humanities * Media art and its place in contemporary culture The conference will be hosted by Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University together with Institute of Media Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum and Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Further information and application form: http://www.filosofija.vu.lt/media.

Worth, Sarah. "Review of William Irwin and Jorge J. E. Gracia, eds. PHILOSOPHY AND THE INTERPRETATION OF POP CULTURE." NDPR November 19, 2007.

Philosophy and the Interpretation of Pop Culture is an edited collection resulting from a conference on the topic held in Buffalo in April, 2004. From the list of contributors alone it is clear that this is an issue that is getting some serious attention by the world of academic philosophy. Heavy hitters such as Noël Carroll, Ted Cohen, Richard Shusterman, Jorge Gracia, and Gareth Matthews are all contributors to the volume. What I think is especially notable about the list of contributors more generally is that they are not all aestheticians, but are well-known philosophers in an array of fields. But this collection is not just another group of essays connecting various aspects of popular culture to philosophical topics. This is meta-philosophy of pop culture -- philosophy about philosophy of pop culture. For this reason, it stands apart from the other books, which examine philosophy through some particular aspect of pop culture. As Irwin says in the introduction, philosophy as a discipline has "had a public relations problem for a couple of centuries now, so engagement with popular culture is not an opportunity we can afford to miss" (3). This collection examines carefully how we might best cultivate this developing relationship between philosophical insight and popular culture in an interesting and effective way. The book is divided into two sections: the first on "Philosophy and Popular Culture," and the second on "Interpretation and Popular Art Forms." The first deals with the theoretical issues, concerns, and limitations of the interaction of the two fields, and the second includes essays in which philosophers deal with a specific artistic medium of popular culture. These media include television, horror films, children's literature, comic books, Rock' n' Roll, and photography. I found the first section considerably more interesting and useful than the second, as it dealt with the meta-issues of what the possibilities are with the courting of philosophy and popular culture in general. The books on the various popular topics "and philosophy" for the most part do not deal with the theoretical issues that concern the limitations of the philosophical use of popular culture, so these essays are particularly helpful in considering the value of doing this kind of philosophy. The second half of the collection focuses less on theoretical issues generally than on issues of interpretation that arise within particular genres of popular art. Although some might assume that popular art might be more transparent than high art and is in no need of interpretation, Irwin suggests in his introduction that this view is mistaken. The hermeneutic issues raised here are not necessarily novel ones, but as they are raised here they give the reader a good sense of how some of the classic problems in philosophy (and in particular in aesthetics) get fleshed out when applied in a new way. These essays are particularly helpful in understanding the unique issues connected with each medium. I will give a short summary of the issues dealt with in each of the essays in what follows. . . . Please read the full review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=11783.

CFP: Seventh International "Crossroads in Cultural Studies," Association for Cultural Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona, July 3-7, 2008.

For information on the seventh installment of the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference, please visit the following website: http://www.crossroads2008.org/v2/index.php.