|
There are urgent questions that
not only are central to the
time and
place in which they arise, but that also transcend those
particularities.
Such questions have rich and complex histories and precarious
futures.
It is these questions that the Social Research conferences seek
to address. The conference series was launched in 1988 and is dedicated
to the maxim that “to forget history is to risk repeating it.”
The series has as its aim the enhancement of public understanding of such
critical and contested issues by exploring those issues in their broad
historical and cultural contexts.
Rather than simply confronting these
difficult questions directly, which is the normal mode of exploration, the conferences in this series
examine the relevant scholarship in the social sciences, humanities, arts and,
where relevant, natural sciences, and bring it to bear on the
contemporary discussions. We believe that this approach is a far more effective way
to illuminate the issues and influence the current public debate. To
this end, the speakers at these conferences come from a wide range of
disciplines with many different perspectives and kinds of expertise:
Historians, political scientists, and art historians routinely participate
alongside legal theorists, policy makers and journalists.
Many of these large, public
conferences have also become the focus of a larger, city-wide, multi-institutional collaboration around the
conference theme, which expands its perspectives through exhibits and public
programs at museums, poetry readings, and related lectures.
The conference series founder and director is Dr. Arien Mack, Editor of
Social Research and Marrow Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research, a
division of The New School.
|
