Join Evenings with an Author (in-person and online*) to discuss
Hannah Arendt
with author Samantha Rose Hill and professor D.N. Rodowick
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Since she first gained international attention for her writing on the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt’s life and image has developed a mythological status: from her refusal of the title of ‘philosopher’ to her battles with Theodor Adorno over Walter Benjamin’s legacy, the legend of Arendt the person is as well-known as her more famous theoretical texts. The triumph of author and researcher Samantha Rose Hill’s new book, Hannah Arendt, is that it avoids demystifying Arendt. Rather, it complicates the myth, contributing new and contradictory information to the historian (and sometimes philosopher’s) biography.
A volume of the University of Chicago Press’s Critical Lives book series, Rose Hill’s concise and intelligent work draws from heavy archival research. After looking at Arendt’s original notebooks, Rose Hill has returned to the world with news: Arendt, famous for her austere disposition and analysis of human evil, also wrote poetry, loved to shop, and enjoyed drinking Campari with soda. This does not lighten the intellectual weight of Arendt’s works, but rather highlights the pathos informing them. Rose Hill presents us with a nuanced picture of a woman who rejected any classification of herself or her ideas, and whose perspective on tragedy and violence was made all the more astute by a love for life and for the world.
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About the speakers:
Samantha Rose Hill is a writer and researcher. She is associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and previously served as assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. Rose Hill is the author of two books on Arendt: Hannah Arendt (2021) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (2022). She is currently writing a book about loneliness for Yale University Press.
D.N. Rodowick is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Elegy for Theory (2014), and Philosophy’s Artful Conversation (2015), among other texts. In his most recent work, An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities (2021), Rodowick argues that Arendt’s philosophy of judgment could reorient the humanities toward a practice of free engagement.
Registration required. Free and open to the public.
*The discussion will be available both online and in person. While Rodowick will be speaking in person in the Reading Room, Rose Hill will be appearing over Zoom. The Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
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Important: on-site information regarding COVID-19
In compliance with French law, a valid Pass Vaccinal (ages 16+) or Pass Sanitaire (ages 12–15) is required to enter the Library. Masks remain strongly recommended, per the French Ministry of Health.
