Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 22-29, 1999

Volume 27, Number 25

Noted Scottish sociologist will be
featured speaker in campus events

The Whitney Humanities Center is sponsoring a colloquium and a related public lecture series that will feature talks by David Frisby, professor of sociology at Glasgow University in Scotland, who is currently a visiting professor in the department of sociology at Yale and a visiting fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center.

Colloquium speakers. "The Spirit of the City in Modernity" is the topic of the colloquium, which will be held on Friday, March 26, 10:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The event is free and open to the public.

Frisby, whose research has been in the areas of social theory and the study of modernity, will speak during the colloquium at 2 p.m. Other speakers at the event will be Iain Boyd Whyte of the University of Edinburgh, Esther da Costa Meyer of Princeton University and Volker Welter of the University of Edinburgh. Serving as discussants at the event will be Joan Ockman of Columbia University and Karsten Harries, a professor of philosophy at Yale.

Lecture series. The lecture series, titled "Simmel and Modernity," will begin with an introductory talk by Frisby on Tuesday, March 23. His other topics in the series will be "Metropolis" on Tuesday, March 30; "Economy" on Tuesday, April 6; "Society" on Tuesday, April 13, and "Culture" on Monday, April 19. All lectures, which are free and open to the public, will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 108 of the Whitney Humanities Center.

Frisby is currently working on the relationship between metropolitan architecture and modernity in the early 20th century in Vienna and Berlin, and has published extensively on the history of social theory, especially on the social theory of Georg Simmel. His books include "The Alienated Mind" and "Georg Simmel."

In addition, he has co-translated a number of Simmel's writings, including his "Philosophy of Money," and most recently edited "Simmel on Culture." Frisby's study of the theories of modernity in the works of Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, titled "Fragments of Modernity," has been translated into German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, and is currently being translated into Chinese.

Frisby's forthcoming works include a study of Otto Wagner and Viennese modernity and a collection of essays titled "Cityscapes of Modernity." His current research, in cooperation with Whyte and Welter, focuses on the topic "The Spirit of the City in Modernity" and is funded by a Getty Grant.

For further information about the colloquium or lecture series, call 432-0670.

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