The great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi is to join an international group of thinkers in a bid to examine the power of love this week. In the first event of its kind, internationally acclaimed Professor of postcolonial theory Leela Gandhi will join academics, poets and practitioners to ask why love matters at The University of Manchester.
(Media-Newswire.com) - The great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi is to join an international group of thinkers in a bid to examine the power of love this week.
In the first event of its kind, internationally acclaimed Professor of postcolonial theory Leela Gandhi will join academics, poets and practitioners to ask why love matters at The University of Manchester.
One of the organisers is Professor Maja Zehfuss is based at the University’s Centre for International Politics.
She is part of The University of Manchester’s ‘Research network on love’, a group of over 80 scholars and postgraduate students from across the University’s Faculty of Humanities and beyond.
Theologians, Buddhists, philosophers and historians will be among the contributors.
She said: “The conference is exciting because it examines how love challenges us, both as academics and as people.
“Too often in our academic work we seem forget about love and how it challenges the ways in which we think about the world.
“Despite millennia of study and writing on love, it is difficult - if not impossible - to define what love is, what love does, or what love means.
“Few would deny that love - for better and worse - animates, shapes, and motivates our beliefs, our relationships, and our endeavours.
“Our participants will attempt to trace some of the contours of love in their professional and artistic work, in what might be termed a desire to give expression to our understandings of love and its impact on and meaning for our lives.”
Famous words of love
“Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable”: Mahatma Gandhi
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”: William Shakespeare.
“Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real” : Iris Murdoch
“If you judge people, you have no time to love them": Mother Teresa.
“Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions” : Woody Allen
Notes for editors Love in our world will take place on 27 and 28 November.
Professor Zehfuss is available for comment
For media inquires contact:
Mike Addelman Media Relations Officer Faculty of Humanities The University of Manchester 07717 881567 0161 275 0790 michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
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