KINGSTON, R.I. – April 1, 2011 – The University of Rhode Island Distinguished Visiting International Scholar series will feature three days of events with Mauro Carbone, professor of aesthetics at Université “Jean-Moulin” Lyon 3 in France.

Carbone – who taught at the State University of Milan, Italy before his recent appointment at Lyon – will deliver two lectures and a seminar in the Lippitt Hall auditorium, room 402. On Wednesday, April 6, he will deliver a lecture titled “Silence, Philospohy, and Life” at 4 p.m. Carbone will follow that on Thursday, April 7 with a lecture titled, “The Philosopher and the Moviemaker: Cinema according to Merleau-Ponty” at 4 p.m., and then a seminar titled “Proust” for all who are interested in Marcel Proust.

A widely published author in several countries, Carbone’s most recent book, translated into English, is An Unprecedented Deformation: Proust and the Sensible Ideas, which was released last year. He has published books in Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese and is the founder and co-editor of the journal Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.

Carbone has been a fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University in New York, a visiting professor of philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York and visiting professor of philosophy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong last summer.

The series of lectures is sponsored by URI’s Office of the Provost, College of Arts and Sciences, Center for the Humanities, Honors Program, and the departments of English, philosophy and film media.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.uri.edu/artsci/cfh/index.html.