Through personal references to great works of literature, the lecture will look at the precarious notion of human decency across a number of themes. These will include an examination of the literature about global warming - the climate change deniers vs the scientific rationalists; 20th Century totalitarianism and the human instinct for warmongering; Primo Levi, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the ‘literature of testimony’; and the question of whether there is cause for hope given the challenges we face in today’s world.
Photos: Susan Trent, Gasbag Studios
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Distinguished UNSW Alumnus Alex Buzo began his acclaimed career as a playwright and author at UNSW in the late 1960’s. Buzo’s iconic Australian play Norm and Ahmed was inspired by an incident on campus and subsequently premiered in 1968 at the Old Tote Theatre, now the Fig Tree Theatre. Buzo received an UNSW Alumni Award in 1998 and then in 2005 he was awarded the university’s highest honour, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, shortly before he passed away in 2006. This is the first of what will become an annual lecture, inspired by Buzo’s contribution to Australian literature and the humanities at UNSW. |
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