The 6th Biennial Dorothy Edgington Lectures and Graduate Workshop

Birkbeck, University of London is delighted to announce the 2025 Edgington Lectures, which will be given by Dr. Stacie Friend (University of Edinburgh) on 14-15 May 2025.

Dr Friend’s lectures are entitled “Fiction and Reality.” An abstract is enclosed below.

I have argued elsewhere that it is a mistake to reduce the distinction between works of fiction and non-fiction — between, for example, novels/short stories/fiction films, and histories/biographies/documentaries — to a distinction between fiction on the one hand and fact or reality on the other. Instead, I maintain that works of fiction, like works of non-fiction, are about the real world, though they ask us to imagine the world differently from how it actually is. In these talks I develop the implications of this view for the significance of fiction. Why do we care about people who never existed and events that never occurred? How can their stories shed light on our lives and the world around us? I argue that answering these questions requires understanding the ways in which works of fiction presuppose a basis in ordinary facts, and I use this idea to explain why works of fiction matter to us.

The Edgington Lectures are public lectures inaugurated by the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. As part of the new School of Historical Studies, philosophers at Birkbeck are proud to continue with the Lectures. Previous Edgington Lectures were given by Catherine Elgin (2023), Katherine Hawley (2018), Kit Fine (2016), Rae Langton (2014) and John McDowell (2012).

Dr. Friend is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining Edinburgh in 2023, she taught at Birkbeck for 9 years. Dr. Friend also taught at Heythrop College, University of London, Washington & Jefferson College, and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Friend received her PhD from Stanford University in 2002. 

Her research lies at the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind, particularly how this intersection pertains to how to engage with works of fiction. She is an Editor of the journal Analysis, and recently served as the President of the British Society of Aesthetics (from 2018 to 2024).

Further details about Dr Friend’s work can be found on her departmental website, as well as here: https://philarchive.org/s/stacie%20friend

Attendance to the lectures is free and open to all, but we kindly ask that you register in advance. Details of the lectures, graduate workshops and registration will be available in due course.

The Graduate Workshop will coincide with the Edgington Lectures. Each presentation will receive a response from the Edgington Lecturer as well as a Q&A. All attendees are encouraged to attend the workshop.

Presentations:

Enrique Aranda-Murillo (University of Granada, Spain): 'Creating Reality out of Fiction'

Tingjiang Kuang (University of Edinburgh, Scotland): 'Counterconventional, Countersubstratum, and Imaginative Resistance'

Sam Heffron (University of St. Andrews, Scotland): ‘Experiencing Realism in Film’

Benoit Guilelmo (University of Zurich, Switzerland): ‘Zetetic Engagement with Fiction’