Princeton University Press Lectures in European History and Culture III: Stories for the future, and how to get there

Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and
Comparative Literature at Harvard University, gives the third and
final lecture in the Princeton University Press Lectures in
European History and Culture. Based on the history of world
literature presented in the first two lectures, Martin Puchner will
seek to draw conclusions about the role of the humanities today.
What he have in mind is something that might be called applied
humanities. Scientists and policy makers have struggled to turn
knowledge about global challenges, from climate change to the
future of the European Union, into meaningful action. But in order
to motivate action, we need more than facts; we need stories. How
can the history of storytelling help us meet this need? And what
types of stories should we develop to meet these challenges? The
guest speaker for this event is Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita
Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard
University. His writings, which include a dozen books and
anthologies and over sixty articles and essays, range from
philosophy and theater to world literature and have been translated
into many languages. Through his best-selling Norton Anthology of
World Literature and his HarvardX MOOC Masterpieces of World
Literature, he has brought four thousand years of literature to
audiences across the globe. His most recent book, The Written
World, which tells the story of literature from the invention of
writing to the Internet, has been widely reviewed in The New York
Times, The Times (London), the Financial Times, The Times Literary
Supplement, The Atlantic, The Economist, among others, covered on
radio and television, and is forthcoming in over a dozen languages.
In hundreds of lectures and workshops from the Arctic Circle to
Brazil and from the Middle East to China, he has advocated for the
arts and humanities in a changing world.