Vanderbilt philosophy professor Kelly Oliver will give a gallery talk at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 17, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Oliver will discuss “Ambivalence Toward Animals and the Moral Community” in response to the Fairy Tales, Monsters and the Genetic Imagination exhibition currently on display. The talk is free with purchase of gallery admission and will meet at the exhibition entrance.
Oliver is the W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy at Vanderbilt with appointments in African American and Diaspora Studies, Film Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies.
Her talk will explore the ambivalence with which animals are treated as members of the moral community – on one hand, as child-like innocents, while on the other, as monsters. She will discuss works in the exhibition in relation to this ambivalence while exploring the ways animals and concepts of “animality” play into our fantasies and ideas about what is cruel, what is innocent and what is natural and unnatural.
Contact: Frist Center for the Visual Arts, (615) 244-3340
mail@fristcenter.org