“Thinking on the Boundaries,” USC’s seventh annual comparative literature conference, will feature keynoter Stanley Cavell, a McArthur “genius grant” recipient and emeritus professor of philosophy at Harvard who has written influentially in all three fields central to the conference.

Others taking part in conference events open to the public include North Carolina born filmmaker Ross McElwee of Harvard (who will screen his latest documentary, Bright Leaves, about tobacco in North Carolina) and plenary speakers Stephen Mulhall of Oxford University, Toril Moi of Duke University, and Karen Hanson of Indiana University.

Twenty-five years ago the idea of philosophy being available in film was thought of as novel or even improper.

But thanks to such thinkers as Cavell, passageways between popular culture and intellectual pursuits are now much easier and more open, said Lawrence F. Rhu, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at USC who is working on a book about Cavell and coordinating the conference with Martin J. Donougho, a professor in the Department of Philosophy.

“It’s more acceptable nowadays to discuss relations between elite and popular culture,” said Rhu, adding that nowadays it’s no longer unusual to find books on philosophy and Seinfeld or The Simpsons at Barnes & Noble stores.

“There is a lot of philosophy in film and literature, and there are a lot of people who are interested in this,” Rhu said. “It just gets you thinking.”

The conference and a graduate comparative literature and philosophy course on Emerson, Nietzsche and Cavell taught by Rhu and Donougho last fall were inspired by Cavell, who has written at length on film criticism, Emerson, Thoreau, and Shakespeare, Rhu said.

“There has been considerable scholarly conversation about Cavell’s work that has crossed these boundaries in provocative and interesting ways,” added Rhu, noting that Cavell has written very positively about the movie The Philadelphia Story (1940) and its relation to American ideals.

“I’m hoping we’ll get to see many ways in which these interests converge and become vehicles of thought in Cavell’s philosophy. Literature and film are philosophical. These media know how to think about themselves. They not only call for philosophy; they provide a context for it.”

Among the topics central to Cavell’s writings that the conference provides an opportunity to explore are Shakespeare and philosophy, Emerson and Nietzsche, Emerson as a philosopher, arguments of genre in film and literature, moral perfectionism, film and the sublime, and film and skepticism.

Rhu’s work on the conference topic has earned him a Fulbright Scholarship later this spring to the University of Lisbon where he will teach a graduate seminar on the availability of philosophy in film and literature. Rhu and Cavell have been invited to the Cinemateca Portuguesa, a major cultural institution in downtown Lisbon that will run a dozen Hollywood classics from the 1930s and 1940s.

Rhu will introduce the films and Cavell will give lectures on film and philosophy.

The sessions for USC’s comparative literature conference will be held in the Russell House auditorium, Gambrell Hall auditorium, at the Clarion Town House Hotel on Gervais Street, and at the Nickelodeon Theater on South Main Street. The conference schedule will appear on a link to the comparative literature Web site at cla.sc.edu/CPLT/activities/index.html. Rhu can be reached at 7-0144.

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