British Society of Aesthetics
Calls for Papers
Special Issue of Art and Philosophy (Sztuka i Filozofia) on Art, Judgment and Criticism
Papers are invited on all aspects of art, judgment and criticism. Various concerns and disagreements among philosophers and art critics about the correctness of artistic judgment, the extreme pluralism of the contemporary art world, and the nature of artistic properties (largely response-dependent and seen as culturally embedded), prompt a broad range of philosophical questions. Philosophical interest in art, judgment and criticism has often highlighted the importance of objectivity of artistic judgment and the role of criticism that implements evaluation. In addition, some aspects of the artworld indicate the hierarchical nature of art. As Philippe de Montebello confessed – “I believe in hierarchies. I believe in good, better, best, and I believe the museum’s role is precisely to help people make those distinctions.” However, equally often, the idea of objective art judgment has been challenged and attempts have been made to replace it by various subjective approaches.
Art and Philosophy (Sztuka i Filozofia), the biannual academic journal offers a forum for discussion about whether, at least, a moderate version of objectivism of critical judgment is still well founded or, are we just limited to one’s own personal perspective.
The issue will contain invited essays as well as papers selected from an open call for papers. This issue of Art and Philosophy is scheduled to be published just before the Nineteenth International Congress of Aesthetics in Krakow in 2013. Guidelines for contributions: Abstract of paper – approx. 200-300 words; Length of paper – not exceeding 6000 words. All submitted articles must be formatted for blind review. Please send your submissions to the editor of this issue of Art and Philosophy, Ewa Bogusz-Boltuc,
ebogu01s@uis.edu. Submission deadline: December 31, 2012.
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British Society of Aesthetics 2012 Annual Conference
21-23 September 2012, Queen’s College, Oxford
Deadline for submissions: 1 April 2012
Papers are invited in all areas of philosophical aesthetics. All submissions
should include a 200 word abstract and must be prepared for blind review.
Regular submissions may not exceed 3500 words excluding abstract (around 30
minutes’ reading time).
For full details visit the conference pages: british-aesthetics.org/conference2012.aspx
Journal: Religion and the Arts
Religion and the Arts, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal from Boston College, is planning a special issue on Opera and Religion for its issue 17.2 (published in June, 2013). Articles on all aspects of Opera and all faith traditions will be considered. Articles of between 4,000 and 9,000 words are preferred using parenthetical citation. Send complete articles to goizueta@bc.edu by October 1, 2012
Music and Philosophy
King’s College London
Friday and Saturday, 20-21 July 2012
The RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group warmly invites paper submissions for this two-day international conference, to be held in London on 20-21 July 2012. The event will offer an opportunity for those with an interest in music and philosophy to share and discuss work, in the hope of furthering dialogue in this area. Paper submissions on all topics related to the area of music and philosophy are welcome, but in particular those relating to this year’s optional theme of ‘Meaning and ineffability’. Collaboration between persons from different disciplines would be especially welcomed.
Conference theme 2012: ‘Meaning and ineffability’
Musical meaning and ineffability have engaged both musicologists and philosophers for decades, resulting in a variety of approaches and debates. While both challenging and elusive, both concepts bear witness to musicological and philosophical endeavours to ascertain what might be meaningful and sayable ‘about’ music, and whether (and/or how) music is able to speak for itself in ways that can be world-disclosive. This year’s (optional) theme seeks to encourage further debate about the possibilities and limitations within the area of ‘musical meaning and ineffability’.
Proposals of up to 500 words are invited for individual papers (20 minutes) and collaborative papers (up to 30 minutes). Please submit proposals by email in a word document attachment: conference2012@musicandphilosophy.ac.uk. The deadline for proposals is Friday 17 February. More information is available on the conference website:
http://www.musicandphilosophy.ac.uk/conference-2012/
Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art?
Submissions of papers are invited for an
international conference in aesthetics ‘Philosophical Aesthetics and the
Sciences of Art?’ to be held at the University of Leeds, 28-30
of June 2012. The conference is organised by the AHRC funded research project
‘Method in Philosophical Aesthetics: The Challenge from the Sciences’ http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/aesthetics/index.html
in association with the University of
Leeds, the University of Nottingham and the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Philosophers are now used to paying close attention to the results of
theoretical and experimental work in the sciences. This has been long-standing
practice in the philosophy of the sciences, and it is now common in the
philosophy of mind. The practice is growing in the philosophy of language and
in ethics, where there is controversy over the authority of linguistic and
moral intuitions. The practice is less common in aesthetics, but it is
beginning to develop, most notably in appeals to theories of vision in disputes
about pictorial perception, and reference to empirical work on the emotions and
imagination in the discussion of our engagement with fiction.
Papers should address one or more of the following topics: whether empirical and/or naturalistic approaches can shed light on the value(s) of art (a subject that may seem especially difficult to get empirical traction on); whether empirical/psychological accounts of creativity (which are notoriously problematic) have any potential to shed light on the profound significance of artistic creativity; whether naturalistic approaches to the imagination fail to address the deep issues raised by the paradox of fiction; whether empirical approaches have, in fact, anything serious to say about beauty or, rather, confuse the beautiful with the merely agreeable.
Papers should take between 40 and 45 minutes to present and be submitted
in a form suitable for blind review. Our aim is to involve speakers with a
variety of perspectives, ranging from those with a good deal of enthusiasm for
“empirical philosophy” to those more inclined to favour traditional, a priori
approaches. It is intended that papers presented at the conference should be
suitable for publication as a special supplementary volume of Philosophy.
It is a condition of accepting the invitation to participate in the conference
that we would have the first right of refusal on a final version of any paper
delivered at the conference for the volume.
Deadline for submissions is 17th February 2012. Conference
fee will be waived for accepted speakers and two nights’ accommodation provided. Papers should be submitted, and enquiries addressed, to Dr. Jon Robson (jonvrobson@googlemail.com)
Philosophy of Computer Games Conference: The Nature of Player Experience
January 2012, Madrid, Spain
Scholars in any field of studies who take a professional interest in the philosophy of computer games are invited to submit
papers to the 6th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer
Games, to be held in Madrid, Spain, on January 29th-31st 2012. Accepted
papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in
relation to computer games. They will refer to specific examples from
computer games rather than merely invoke them in general terms.
The over-arching theme of the conference is The Nature of Player
Experience. Over the past decade, the topic of player experience has
attracted attention from a multitude of disciplines and practices
focusing on computer games.
Abstracts should be maximum 1000 words including bibliography. The deadline for submissions is 17:00 GMT, October 15th,
2011. Please submit your abstract in PDF format through
http://review.gamephilosophy.org.
Visit the conference website for more information on how to submit an abstract for the conference.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the program committee at gamephilosophy2012.pc@gmail.com.
Edited Volume: Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind
In his work The Meaning of the Body philosopher Mark Johnson argues that aesthetics is not just art theory. Rather, it should be considered to be the study of everything that goes into the human capacity to make and experience the bodily pre-linguistic cognitive, emotional and sensory-perceptual conditions of meaning constitution having its origins in the organic activities of living creatures and in their organism-environment transactions. In this way he rejects both the Kantian view of aesthetics according to which aesthetics is nonconceptual and incapable of giving rise to knowledge and the mind/body dichotomy that underlies it. Johnson introduces the embodied mind thesis into aesthetics, which denies a separation of mind and body, sees meaning, reason and imagination as embodied and ties reason to emotion. With the purpose of evaluating, exploring and putting into focus the impact of the embodied mind thesis on aesthetics as well as its breadth and relevance for the field we are creating an edited volume with the title Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind.
Contributions are welcome which are firmly based on the embodied mind thesis and use it as a framework for investigating the role of aesthetics in the study of how humans make and experience meaning. Papers from literary aesthetics, pragmatist aesthetics, evolutionary aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, empirical aesthetics, computational aesthetics, psychology of aesthetics are welcome. Both theoretical and empirical contributions will be taken into consideration. Prospective contributors are invited to send their initial proposals (500 words abstract) by the March 15, 2012 to the following email address: alfonsinascarinzi@googlemail.com.
Artification: Ideas and Practices
Three-day conference on 15-17 August 2012, Finland
The research project Artification and Its Impact on Art will arrange a three-day conference on the theme of artification.
The neologism artification refers to situations and processes in which something that is not regarded as art in the traditional sense of the word is changed into something art-like, art-related, or into something that takes influences from the arts. Often this means mixing art with non-art and creating new kinds of hybrids.
In recent years the phenomenon has been widely discussed, using various terminologies, in many contexts such as philosophical art theory and sociology of art, as well as in art-and-business and art-and-health care discourses. Differing ideas on why artification happens, whether it means compromising the autonomy of art, and how does it affect the conceptual, institutional and practical levels of art have been presented.
The organisers would like to invite scholars and artists interested in the theme to share their visions on these and related questions. Both traditional academic papers as well as more experimental proposals are welcome.
Conference venue will be Sibelius Academy Music Center Kallio-Kuninkala (Järvenpää, Finland) http://www.kuninkala.fi/etusivu_eng.asp .
Conference fee will be between 150-200 Euros, including accommodation (two nights) and meals.
For further information, including deadline for call for papers, please visit the Artification Conference web page: http://artification.aalto.fi/2012