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Friday, September 22, 2006
Calls for Papers
1. THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE BOOK, Emerson College, Boston, USA, 20-22 October 2006
2. Victorian Studies, special issue on Victorian Emotions
3. From the Brain to Human Culture: Intersections between the Humanities and Neuroscience
More information below the fold.
Dear Colleague,
I am writing on behalf of the Organising Committee, to inform you of the final round in the call for papers for the:
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE BOOK
Emerson College, Boston, USA, 20-22 October 2006
http://www.Book-Conference.com
The conference will address a range of critically important themes relating to the book - including the past, present and future of publishing, libraries, literacy and learning in the information society. Main speakers will include:
* Jason Epstein, On Demand Books; formerly Editorial Director, Random House
* Sven Birkerts, Author of ‘The Gutenberg Elegies’
* John Cole, Director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress
* Sara Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, Publishers Weekly
* Jan Constantine, General Counsel, The Author’s Guild
* John Morse, President, Merriam-Webster
* Helene Atwan, Director, Beacon Press
* Bob Young, Founder and CEO, Lulu.com
* Angus Phillips, Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University, UK
* Ed Morrow, Northside Bookstore, Vermont, and former President of the American Booksellers Association
There will also be numerous presentations by researchers and practitioners. Publishers, librarians, academics, teachers, authors and associated professionals are all welcome to attend.
I would particularly like to invite you to respond to the conference call for papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for consideration before or after the conference in the fully refereed International Journal of the Book. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in the journal, and give you access to the electronic version of the journal.
The deadline for the final round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 30 September 2006. Full details of the conference, including an online call for papers form, are to be found at the conference website - http://www.Book-Conference.com
We look forward to receiving your proposals and hope you will be able to join us in Boston.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr David Emblidge
Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing
Emerson College, Boston, USA
CFP: Victorian Emotions (2/1/07; journal issue)
Victorian Studies seeks essays for a special issue on “Victorian Emotions.” Possible topics include—but are not limited to—the role of the emotions in Victorian notions of psychology, physiology, science, history, politics, or art. This special issue will provide a forum for discussing Victorian concerns about the emotions that remain at issue today: What are the political stakes involved in the emotions?
What is the relation between the emotions and reason? What is the role of historical specificity in emotional experience? It will also engage questions that arise for intellectual, literary, and social historians of the emotions - as well as for those working in the field of Victorian studies more generally: What are the limits to what we can know about other historical moments? What tools are available to us for reconstructing past understandings or experiences? To what extent do these tools necessarily cross or complicate disciplinary boundaries?
Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2007. Please direct all queries to guest editor Rachel Ablow (rablow@buffalo.edu). Essays may not exceed 8,000 words. Please send hard copies of each submission to Rachel Ablow, Department of English, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260.
From the Brain to Human Culture: Intersections between the Humanities and Neuroscience
An interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Comparative Humanities Program at Bucknell University to be held at
Bucknell University
April 20-21, 2007
Confirmed Plenary Speakers:
Prof. Andy Clark,
Dept. of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
Prof. Michael Gazzaniga
Dept. of Psychology, University of California at Santa Barbara
Papers and/or panels are solicited for an interdisciplinary conference examining the intersections between recent work in the humanities and neurosciences. In the past decade, the various branches of neuroscience (as well as linguistics, sociobiology and other fields) have begun to take up the ethical, artistic and
behavioral questions that were previously thought to be the province of scholars in the humanities and to challenge the centrality of learned human behavior in these and other areas. Scholars such as Simon Baron-Cohen, Marc Hauser, and Steven Pinker (among many others) have begun to provide scientific accounts of ethical phenomena and neuroscientific research has coined new subdisciplinary fields such as “neuroethics,” and “neuroaesthetics.” Scholars in the humanities, in their turn, have begun to produce critical-philosophical accounts of the claims of these scholars and new work on subjects such extended consciousness, artificial intelligence, robotics, and the effects of digital culture on human subjectivity and cultural production. The purpose of this conference will be to explore the status of this important debate at the present time. We especially encourage papers that cross conventional disciplinary lines and/or that
directly address the scholarly, institutional, and practical consequences of the ways in which the humanities and sciences are interacting at present. Papers from across the whole range of both the humanities (art, religion, literature,
philosophy, film studies, history, languages, etc.) and neuroscience and its related fields (psychology, cognitive science, physiology, animal behavior, organismal and evolutionary biology, etc.) are welcome.Given the interdisciplinary nature of the panels and audience, we ask that potential presenters be aware that they will not just be addressing specialists in their field. Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication
in an edited book in the Aperçus: Histories Texts Cultures series from Bucknell University Press.
Among the possible themes for papers and panels are:
- can new disciplines like “neuroethics” work alongside traditional humanistic modes of enquiry or is conflict between the two inevitable?
- what have the humanities done to respond to these new developments in the sciences?
- what new configurations of the relationship between the sciences and the humanities could be made possible by this new work?
- how are questions of culture (human activity in the world) being related to the activities of the mind and brain in new and productive ways? And vice versa?
- how does neuroscientific study affect the way we understand the reception of books, films, and digital media?
- how are “rationality” and “emotion” seen as part of human decision making process by humanists and neuroscientists?
- how has recent research in evolutionary biology and psychology affected our perceptions of cultural productions?
Please send a 500-word abstract and CV as an email attachment to:
Prof. John Hunter
Comparative Humanities Program
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA 17837
Submissions via regular mail will be accepted if
necessary. Comments and inquiries to the above address are welcome.
DEADLINE: December 15th, 2006.