Events

Marshall School business professor Nandini Rajagopalan probes business as a polymathic art form.

Computer science and engineering professor Shrikanth Narayanan discusses the polymathic patterning of multiple realities through digital technology.

A conversation with Lisa Bitel, professor of history.

Physics professor Clifford Johnson discusses how and why polymathic playfulness is crucial to theoretical physics.

A conversation with Tara McPherson, professor of critical studies.

Presidential professor and Isaias Hellman professor of polymathy Sidney Harman and Alexander Marr, professor of art history, wind up the spring 2011 Polymathic Pizza Undergraduate Series with a discussion of the process through which great polymaths got their acts together.

The Divine Comedy by the late medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri at once summarized the Middle Ages and suggested the impending era of Renaissance humanism.  As a philosopher and theologian, Dante mastered the thought of his time.  As a polymath with interests in Roman history, Latin literature, and the latest developments in science, optics especially, Dante anticipated the preoccupations of the ensuing centuries in Western European thought and literature.

A conversation among Professor Lord John Eatwell, President of Queens' College, Cambridge; the Honorable Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, currently serving as Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture; Alexander Marr, Associate Professor of Art History; and Nandini Rajagopalan, Captain Henry W. Simonsen Chair in Strategic Entrepreneurship, Director of Research at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and Professor of Management and Organization.

Business is a theory, a practice, and an art form.  So is poetry.  And so...

Covering Quadrants:  (1) critical and integrative thinking; (2) study of the polymaths 

The classical adage “civilization follows commerce” took on new intensity in the Renaissance as mercantile and banking dynasties such as the De Medicis of Italy and the Fuggers of Germany established European-wide networks of commerce and became patrons of the arts and sciences.  During this era, in fact, art itself became a business; hence to understand the interaction of these two forces requires multiple perspectives.