Feb 16: Public Lecture: Jeannie Miller (Univ of Toronto)

Date: 

Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

6 Divinity Ave., #201

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations presents:

Dr. Jeannie Miller

Assistant Professor, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto

 "Exceptions and Wonders: Rhetoric and al-Jahiz's Natural Science"

 Tuesday, February 16, 4:00 p.m.

6 Divinity Avenue, room 201

The ninth-century polymath al-Jahiz has, in his cultural afterlife, acquired two personae: the impish and sophistic author employing the rhetorical genre of “debating the merits” of various objects, and the passionate theologian who pursued natural science as a component of theology.  Integrating these elements of al-Jahiz’s output, this talk will examine the argumentative and performative strategies within the rhetorical debates he narrates in Kitāb al-ayawān (Book of Animals). I will ask how he thought rhetoric produced knowledge of natural science, and why exceptional, shocking, and extreme creatures figure so prominently.