Gardiner Program at Yale Holds Final Meetings for 2001-02

The Muriel Gardiner Program in Psychoanalysis and the Humanities at Yale will finish the academic year with two meetings in April.

On Thursday April 18, Anne Higonnet will speak on “The Photographs of Sally Mann.” Higonnet is an associate professor of art history at Wellesley College, and author of “Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood” (Thames & Hudson, 1998).

The final event in the series, on Thursday, April 25, will feature guest speaker Qin Wei. He is professor of philosophy/psychology at Chengdu University in Sichuan China, where he is also a senior psychoanalytic candidate and deputy director of the Psychoanalytic Center. Wei will speak on “The History of Psychoanalysis in China.” Deborah Davis, professor of sociology and director of academic programs at Yale’s Center for the Study of Globalization, will serve as discussant of Wei’s paper.

The Muriel Gardiner Program in Psychoanalysis and the Humanities was set up by the New Land Foundation. Gardiner, a heroine of World War II, was the inspiration for the character “Julia” of Lillian Hellman’s autobiographical book “Pentimento.”

Paul Schwaber and Nancy Olson, M.D., are the current coordinators of the program, having succeeded long-time director Albert J. Solnit, M.D., in June 2001. Olson is a candidate of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry in the Yale School of Medicine. She received her M.D. at Yale School of Medicine and prior to that, a master’s degree and M.Phil. in art history also at Yale. Schwaber is a graduate analyst of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and professor of letters at Wesleyan University. His most recent book is “The Cast of Characters: A Reading of Ulysses” (Yale University Press, 1999).

In past years, the series has included such subjects as “The Other Mozart Effect: How Musicians Get Hurt” and “Composing Fathers from Rachmaninoff to Ives,” by Yale professor Kyle Pruett, a child psychiatrist and a professional singer. This year the series has featured a talk by Laura Wexler, who teaches in the women’s and gender studies program and American studies department at Yale; two talks on Vincent Van Gogh; and a discussion of “Flaubert, the Nauseated Anatomist” by Peter Gay, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale.

The talks are held in room 108 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street. There is a reception prior to each talk at 7 p.m. If planning to attend the reception, call Alicia Grendziszewski at 203 785-7205 (or e-mail, alicia.grendziszewski@yale.edu) before Monday, April 15 for Higonnet’s talk and Monday, April 22 for Qin Wei’s talk.