British Society of Aesthetics

Calls for Papers
Aesthetics, Art and Pornography
An interdisciplinary conference
16-18 June 2011
Institute of Philosophy, London (in collaboration with the Aesthetics Research Group, University of Kent)

The aim of this conference is to investigate, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature. The conference will bring together philosophers and aestheticians, art historians and film theorists, to explore these topics. This interdisciplinary approach is intended to throw new light on these general questions, and to lead to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the range of representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic culture, in Western and non-Western contexts.

The organisers invite submissions on any issue related to this topic, ranging from abstract philosophical questions to detailed analyses of particular films, paintings, photographs, novels, etc. Papers from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives are encouraged. Speakers will have a presentation time of approximately 40 minutes. Papers should not exceed 5000 words and should be accompanied by a 100-word abstract and a short CV. Please send papers to conference organiser Hans Maes (H.Maes@kent.ac.uk) by February 1, 2011. Communication of acceptance: March 15, 2011.

Organising committee: Hans Maes, Michael Newall, Murray Smith, Barry C. Smith, Jerrold Levinson, Jonathan Friday.


Book of essays on Philosophy and Kafka
This project is already somewhat developed. In order to supplement an already established list of contributions, the editors will be selecting ONE proposal for EACH of the following specific topics: 1) Hannah Arendt on Kafka 2) Theodor W. Adorno on Kafka. The two selected proposals will show an obvious concern with how philosophy might relate to, or be incipient in, Franz Kafka’s stories and novels. A principal purpose of the book will be to consider various conceptions of the relationship of literature and philosophy. Please send a proposal of approximately 300 words, as well as a short biography, by 1st November 2010 to both of the volume editors: Brendan Moran (bmoran@ucalgary.ca) and Carlo Salzani (carlo.salzani@monash.edu). The likely deadline for complete essays is April 1, 2011.


Association of Art Historians Annual Conference 2011
31 March – 2 April 2011, University of Warwick
Round and Round Go Space and Time: The Afterlife of Lessing in Artistic Practice

When Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote his treatise called Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry in 1766, the theory presented therein offered a systematic differentiation of the perceived strengths and weaknesses of each art. Supposedly so that they could peacefully coexist, Lessing endeavoured to equitably carve out spheres for visual and textual media, in support of Horace’s ut pictura poesis tradition. Painting and poetry were divided based upon the notion that poetry belonged to the realm of time, and painting to the province of space. This session hopes to explore artistic responses to Lessing’s aesthetic theory, as well as derivative theories ranging from the eighteenth century to Clement Greenberg and beyond. For instance, how have scholars of the Modern era expanded upon the legacy of these systems? Should we sound the death knell for the theories of Lessing, Greenberg, and their kind in the world of artistic production, or will conceptions of temporality, spatiality, and artistic competition continue to be played out indefinitely in all media, as W.J.T. Mitchell has proposed?

Please send your paper proposal to Sarah Lippert (sarjorlip@comcast.net) and Melissa Geiger (mgeiger@po-box.esu.edu). If you would like to offer a paper, please email the session chair(s) directly, providing an abstract of your proposed paper in no more than 250 words, your name and institutional affiliation (if any). You may only submit an abstract to one AAH session. Please do not send proposals to the conference convenor. Deadline for submissions: 8 November 2010.


Contemplations of the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
Date of conference: Friday 10th – Saturday 11th December 2010 Venue: Liverpool Cathedral, St James Mount, Liverpool, L1 7AZ. Keynote speakers: James Elkins - School of the Art Institute of Chicago John Harvey - University of Aberystwyth Graham Howes - University of Cambridge David Jasper - University of Glasgow

The history of Western art comes out of a Judaeo-Christian legacy and for centuries the relationship between religion and art was close. It is only in fairly recent times, since the beginning of modernism and the advent of contemporary art, that the two have been considered apart. In this conference we are going to build on this theme by placing religion (which is taken in its more inclusive sense to refer to the spiritual) in dialogue with contemporary art. The conference was inspired by the work of Lin Holland and Jane Poulton who were artists-in-residence at both Liverpool Cathedral and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool from November 2007 to November 2008. Their work will be showcased during the conference. Registration fee (including delegate pack and refreshments) for the whole conference: £70 (£45 for one day). The organisers invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes duration, dealing with the conference topic.

The deadline for proposals is: 30th September 2010.Please send proposals including: title of paper, abstract of 500 words maximum and a brief CV to Rina Arya at:
contemplationsofthespiritual@yahoo.co.uk. For more information about the conference, please visit the Liverpool Cathedral's website.


The Value of Aesthetics
Submissions of papers are invited for an aesthetics conference, to be held at the Institute of Philosophy in London, on 23rd and 24th of June 2011. The conference aims to explore the place and value of the study of aesthetics. Submissions should fall under any of the following headings: aesthetics and philosophy, aesthetics and the art world, and aesthetics and the human sciences.

Papers should take between 35 and 40 minutes to present. The conference has slots reserved for graduate papers, so submissions from graduate students should be clearly marked as such. Papers should be prepared for blind review, and sent as an email attachment in Word to Derek Matravers (d.c.matravers@open.ac.uk) by the 1st February 2011.


The Power of the Word: Poetry, Theology and Life
17-18 June 2011
Heythrop College, University of London

This conference is organized by Heythrop College and the Institute of English Studies, University of London.

Recent work in philosophy of religion, theology, the study of religions and literary criticism has once again brought to the fore issues which arise when literature, faith, theology and life meet, whether in harmony or in conflict. This international conference aims to: · foster a dialogue among scholars in theology, philosophy, spirituality and literature and between these and creative writers; · discuss the ‘truth’ of poetry and the ‘truth’ of theology in relation to each other; · reassess the idea of poetry as a criticism of life; · discuss the relationship between faith, theology and the creative imagination through an examination of theoretical issues and the study of specific texts; · examine the importance of poetry for personal and social identity, social cohesion and relations between faiths and cultures.

Keynote Speakers: Professor Gianni Vattimo (University of Turin) Professor Helen Wilcox (University of Bangor) Professor M. Paul Gallagher (Gregorian University, Rome) Professor Paul Fiddes (University of Oxford), tbc. Other invited speakers include: Professor John Took (UCL), Professor Jay Parini (Middlebury College, Vermont), Olivier-Thomas Venard (Professor Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem), Dr Antonio Spadaro (Gregorian University, Rome), Dr Stefano Maria Casella (IULM University, Milan), Dr Florian Mussgnug (UCL).

The organisers invite scholars currently working in the subject field to offer panel papers (30 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion) to address the following titles and themes. Please email abstracts of 500 words max. by Friday 14 October 2011 to: f.knox@heythrop.ac.uk and d.lonsdale@heythrop.ac.uk


American Society for Aesthetics - Eastern Division Meeting
April 8-9, 2011
Independence Park Hotel, Philadelphia

Plenary Lecture John Hyman (Oxford University) Monroe Beardsley Lecture, Temple University Robert Pippin (University of Chicago) Papers on any topic in aesthetics are invited, as well as proposals for panels, author-meets-critics, or other special sessions. They also welcome volunteers to serve as session chairs and commentators.

All participants must be members of the American Society for Aesthetics and must register for the conference. Papers should not exceed 3,000 words, should be accompanied by a 100-word abstract, and must be prepared for blind review. Please send submissions in PDF, Word, or RTF format to Tiger Roholt at tiger.roholt@montclair.edu. Please feel free to direct questions to the Program Co-Chairs: Christopher Bartel (Appalachian State University) bartelcj@appstate.edu or Tiger Roholt (Montclair State University).

Deadline for submissions: Friday, January 14, 2010


Time’s Excesses in Music, Literature and Art
This international conference is intended to explore how time may be represented aesthetically in excessive, eccentric and unthinkable ways. Papers may address any aspect of excesses in representing time. Possible contributions could be connected to works that magnify time phenomena and exploit the extremities of time experience. Submissions could focus either on the aesthetics of enlargement, predicated on speed, frequency, and length, or, conversely, on the aesthetics of miniaturization or atomisation of time. Time’s excesses could also lead us to raise questions about violence, as in artistic phenomena of suddenness, cuts or breaks. Also, it would be interesting to examine forms related to non traditional ways of depicting time, covering areas of anachronism, discontinuity, verticality, stasis, or any other form of time singularity taken to extremes. One could also consider works presenting us with exuberance, extravagance and eeriness of time, be it through peculiar formal aspects or ways of conditioning uncanniness. Finally, time’s excesses and peculiarities give rise to the idea of the unthinkable some works of art present us with by means of illogical, absurd or incoherent portrayal of time.

Abstracts between 250-300 words for papers of 20 minutes to be given in English or French are invited by 15 January 2011. Please submit your abstract both to Marcin Stawiarski (marcin.stawiarski@unicaen.fr) and Gilles Couderc (gilles.couderc@unicaen.fr). The conference papers will be published as a special issue of LISA e-Journal. Language: English or French Dates: 27-28 May 2011. Abstract deadline: 15 January 2011. For more information, click here.


1st Annual Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group
Institute of Musical Research and Institute of Philosophy, Stewart House, University of London
Friday and Saturday, 1-2 July 2011

The RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group warmly invites paper submissions for their inaugural two-day international conference, to be held in London on 1-2 July 2011. The event, the first of an annual series of conferences run by the Study Group, will offer an opportunity for musicologists and philosophers to share and discuss work in the hope of furthering dialogue between the two disciplines.

Paper submissions on all topics related to the area of music and philosophy are welcome, but in particular those relating to this year’s theme of ‘Opera and Philosophy’. Collaboration between persons from different disciplines would be especially welcomed. In addition to papers relating to the conference theme, topics of interest might include (but are not limited to): music, meaning, and language; perception and expression; music and ethics; music and ontology; performance, authenticity, and interpretation.

Proposals of up to 500 words are invited for individual papers (20 minutes) and collaborative papers (up to 30 minutes). Please submit proposals by e-mail to the conference organiser Dr Nanett Nielsen: nanette.nielsen@nottingham.ac.uk . The deadline for proposals is Monday 10 January 2011. All paper submissions will be considered by the conference committee: Professor Garry Hagberg, Professor Julian Johnson, Mr Tomas McAuley, Dr Nanette Nielsen.


Thinking Through Dance: The Philosophy of Dance Performance and Practices
A one-day conference on 26th February 2011 at Froebel College, Roehampton University

This conference explores the philosophical questions raised by and in dance. Relatively under-theorised as it has been in the history of aesthetics, dance presents fertile ground for philosophical enquiry. Abstracts are invited for papers and (part-) practical presentations of 30 minutes (plus 15 minutes discussion time) on topics including, but not limited to, the following: Dance and embodiment; Dance meaning and artistic intention; Expressivity and the dancing body; Representation in dance; The ontology of dance; Authentic performance; Dance at the intersection of analytic and continental philosophy. Papers and presentations in any philosophical tradition are welcome.

Deadline for submission: 15th November 2010 (Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 17th December 2010). Panel for selection of asbtracts / papers includes: Graham McFee, Jenny Bunker, Sara Houston, Geraldine Morris, Anna Pakes & Bonnie Rowell Please e-mail your abstract and contact/affiliation details (on a separate sheet) in MsWord or PDF format to Julia Noyce: Julia.Noyce@roehampton.ac.uk. Organised by Roehampton University Dance Department.


Journal of Philosophy Teorema: Philosophy of Music / Filosofía de la música
Philosophy of music is a second-level reflection on the nature of music and our experience of it. Music is a practice fraught with meaning and value in the lives of many people and occupies an important place in our artistic culture. However, it raises philosophical questions perhaps more difficult than other artistic practices.

The focus of discussion falls into the following areas: (a) issues relating to the definition of music (the difference between noises, sounds and tones, the debate between objectivism and subjectivism about musical phenomena, the opposition between ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ music, etc.); (b) problems relating to the ontology of music (the clash between nominalism and ideali sm about the relationship between a musical ‘work’ and its tokens or ‘performances’, the controversy between fictionalism and realism, etc.); (c) questions concerning the psychology of music (how music manages to express emotions, what are the listener’s emotional responses to it, what are the criteria for assessing such responses, etc.); (d) problems regarding the semantics of music (the semiotics of musical meaning, the link between music and text, the distinction between structure and content, the controversy between representationalism and expressivism, etc.); (e) problems regarding the understanding of music (what constitutes the experience of understanding music, what skills and behavioural responses are involved in such understanding, etc.); (f) issues concerning the value of music: (what makes musical experience valuable, what connections can be established between music and mysticism, between music and ineffability, between music and silence, etc.).

teorema invites submissions of papers on these and related topics for a special issue to be published in 2012. Articles must be written in Spanish or English and should not exceed 6,000 words. For the presentation


Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature, and the Arts
The Lincoln School of Performing Arts, University of Lincoln, UK, is pleased to host the Fourth International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature, and the Arts. The conference will be held in Lincoln, UK, from Saturday 28 to Monday 30 May 2011. Abstracts (up to 1 page) are invited for papers relating any aspect of consciousness (as defined in a range of disciplines involved with consciousness studies) to any aspect of theatre, performance, literature, music, fine arts, media arts and any sub-genre of those. We also welcome creative work! Please send the abstract to Professor Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, dmeyerdinkgrafe@lincoln.ac.uk Deadline for receipt of abstracts is 1 March 2011


"The Media of Photography" First call for papers
A Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism "The Media of Photography", First Call for Papers Guest Editors: Diarmuid Costello (Warwick, UK) and Dominic McIver Lopes (UBC, Canada)

Potential contributors are encouraged to read the full special issue proposal at: jaac.mentalpaint.net. Any philosophical treatment of photography will be considered. Submissions should not exceed 7,000 words and must comply with the general guidelines for submissions (see “Submissions” on the JAAC website: www.temple.edu/jaac). Send submissions as e-mail attachments to both guest editors, indicating clearly that your submission is for the special issue. Deadline for Submissions: 10 January 2011.
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