I want to put students and readers in a position where they have cultural knowledge about this moment, or about a work that seems relevant and important to know. That seems more important than imposing an interpretation on them. In the defense of Freud and Thomas Mann, who then, after the statute gets rediscovered, find themselves super intrigued that there is this moment in Egyptian history that we witness because of that discovery. So I would actually say that these artists, in thinking about this cultural moment and writing either are kind of treatise in the case of Freud or a very long novel in theCase of Thomas Mann,. There are actually current scholars of Egyptology who are quite cognizant of that reception history
In an age where the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation seems ever more blurred, can anyone actually own a culture? In this conversation acclaimed author and public intellectual Martin Puchner explains that the history of mankind has always been a story of borrowing from one another and that this is something to be celebrated, not lamented. The idea of ownership implicit in debates about cultural appropriation, he argues, presents an insular tale about how culture evolves — flattening out the complicated textures of human history and, in the end, what truly makes us us. Our host for this discussion is Edward Wilson Lee, fellow and lecturer at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.
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