EVENT: "The Politics of Rhetoric," a talk by Ernesto Laclau, professor of government at the University of Essex

The Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Rochester, in conjunction with the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, will be sponsoring "The Politics of Rhetoric," the first in a series of lectures on European studies. The presentation will begin at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 11, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the University of Rochester River Campus.

The talk will be delivered by Ernesto Laclau, professor of government at the University of Essex. He will look at how major figures as varied as mathematician Blaise Pascal and philosopher Georges Sorel explored how political institutions and political analysis can be the sites of language games, and how this can impact a radical democracy.

Laclau studied at the Universities of Buenos Aires and Oxford and obtained a doctorate at the University of Essex. At present he holds a chair in political theory at the University of Essex, where he is also director of the doctoral program in ideology and discourse analysis. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, and the Institute of Humanities in California.

The talk is free and open to the public. For more information please contact (585) 275-4253.