In the month of April, Professor Quentin Skinner visited Washington and Lee University in Virginia, USA to deliver two public lectures. The first lecture, titled ‘How Should We Think About Freedom’, was part of the Mudd Center’s lecture series on ‘The Ethics of Citizenship’, while the second lecture, titled ‘Why Shylock Loses His Case: Judicial Rhetoric in The Merchant of Venice‘, was part of the university’s year-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death in April 1616. To watch a recording of the second lecture, please click here.
Monthly Archives: April 2016
Quentin Skinner at Washington and Lee University
Professor Richard Bourke’s inaugural lecture
‘And the Glory of Europe is Extinguished Forever’: What was the Old Regime?
Historians tend to explain the origins of modern Europe in terms of the demise of ‘the old regime’. The Enlightenment, culminating in the Age of Revolutions, is usually described as the transition between the two epochs. In this lecture, Professor Richard Bourke explores the emergence of the idea of the old regime, and asks whether it adequately captures past experience. If the period since 1750 cannot be coherently viewed in terms of progress from an ancien régime to modernity, we are left with a general question that bears on our current self-understanding: how are we to interpret the meaning of our present?
To view the flyer (pdf), click here.
To listen to a recording of the lecture, click here.