{"id":11844,"date":"2016-03-15T06:35:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T13:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11844"},"modified":"2016-03-16T08:54:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T15:54:41","slug":"batman-meets-academia-for-a-night-at-local-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/03\/15\/batman-meets-academia-for-a-night-at-local-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Batman meets academia for a night at local university"},"content":{"rendered":"

Batman: whether through the live-action films, the comics, or the animated shows, almost everyone knows about the Dark Knight, and just saying the word immediately conjures up an image in most people\u2019s minds. This is the reason that three experts from different fields will be coming together for An Evening with Batman\u2019s Brain, a night at the University of Victoria that will feature talks about psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, all using Batman as their main subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically we\u2019re bringing together three different perspectives around the brain and the mind to talk about Batman,\u201d says E. Paul Zehr, a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at UVic, as well as the author of several books. \u201cWe have a psychologist coming from Arkansas, a guy named Travis Langley, who wrote a book a while ago called Batman and Psychology.<\/i> We\u2019ve got a guy coming from New York, at the College of Staten Island, named Mark White, who wrote a chapter in, and edited, a book called Batman and Philosophy<\/i>, and has written all kinds of other things. And my contribution is neuroscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The setup allows the three to do a Comic-Con style panel, with people talking about the different aspects of Batman and his brain from the perspective of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. Zehr says he\u2019ll be focusing on some of the things from one of his books, Batman: The Possibility of a Super Hero<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"E.<\/a>
E. Paul Zehr knows a thing or two about Batman. And neuroscience (photo by Deborah Price).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBatman, to me, represents an example of sort of the peak conditioning of a human body and brain to get to the highest level of performance that we can achieve. It works as a metaphor for thinking about what is really possible for a human being to do with training, diet, and whatever genetic disposition they already have,\u201d says Zehr. \u201cWe think about Batman, all the athleticism, the martial arts abilities, the determination; let\u2019s look at what of that character is realizable, what of that could you do, if any.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Zehr says that whether or not you could do it is not the main issue, because, with the scope of all of the things he does, actually becoming Batman is impossible. What\u2019s more important are the parts of the Batman mythology based around determination, hard work, and tenacity leading to achievement. The ability to convey these ideas is exactly why Zehr chooses to use Batman as his vehicle of education.<\/p>\n

\u201cBatman is a great metaphor, and it\u2019s important as a university professor, where you are accumulating lots of knowledge, because sometimes stuff gets lost from the general public,\u201d says Zehr. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to have some special terminology about something; we can now talk in the context of Batman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zehr argues that if two people are able to conjure up the same idea in their heads\u2014in this case, the Caped Crusader\u2014then they will be able to talk about all different types of topics. He says this will be very important to education going forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to use pop culture as a bridge between scientific knowledge and the general public,\u201d says Zehr. \u201cI\u2019m not saying you need to use superheroes, necessarily; use something you like, but also something that\u2019s popular so that half your job of getting people interested is already taken care of before you talk about the main message.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Evening with Batman\u2019s Brain
\n7 pm Wednesday, March 16
\nFree, but tickets must be reserved
\nUVic Farquhar Auditorium
\ntickets.uvic.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Batman: whether through the live-action films, the comics, or the animated shows, almost everyone knows about the Dark Knight, and just saying the word immediately conjures up an image in most people\u2019s minds. This is the reason that three experts from different fields will be coming together for An Evening with Batman\u2019s Brain, a night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-16-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11853,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11844\/revisions\/11853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}