The Future of Emotions: Conversations Without Borders
University Club of Western Australia, The University of Western Australia
14‒15 June, 2018

Enquiries: Email Pam Bond at emotions@uwa.edu.au

More info: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/the-future-of-emotions-conversations-without-borders.

Conference Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Andrew Lynch, Director ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, UWA
• Associate Professor Penny Edmonds, University of Tasmania
• Professor John Sutton, Macquarie University

Public Lecture Speaker:

• Professor Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania

Scholarship on the history of emotions is now rich and varied, and informed by multiple disciplinary perspectives from the humanities. This conference celebrates the many achievements of humanities emotions research and looks to new horizons in which it can be applied, seeking contributions that lend themselves to discussion about future directions.

WHAT are the theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities for this field? What cross- and interdisciplinary connections can humanities scholars make through history of emotions research? How does humanities emotions research inform discussions in education and training?

HOW have populations from the medieval to the present conceived of emotions in relation to nature and viewed the capacity of the non-human world to experience emotions or define those of humans? How have feeling cultures created new sociabilities with nature in the pre-industrial period or anthropocene age?

HOW has humanities emotions research informed developments of new technologies, from the emergence of print to smartphones and robots, or shifted meanings in cultural spheres such as art, performance and online community formation?

WHAT contribution can humanities emotions research make in understanding how people have adapted to changes in the world around them, from the emergence of new religious practices, encounters with previously unknown cultures or today’s post-global anxieties? How have past populations envisaged future emotional worlds and anticipated challenges and opportunities for the future? How and why do historical and contemporary populations look back with feeling to past ages? How do emotional experiences and ideas help us understand identities, communities and entities with rights and agency? What applications does humanities emotions research have in community dialogue, policy and public discourse?

The conference organisers invite proposals for a wide variety of individual or collaborative presentation forms, including 20-minute papers, panel sessions, interpretive performance or technological demonstrations, on the following (or related) themes that relate to breakthrough analyses of emotions and:

Innovative humanities methodologies for the emotions

• Emerging theorisations
• Interdisciplinarity
• Pedagogical developments

Emotional technologies: past, present and future

• Print cultures
• New media art and music
• Robotics
• Emoticons, smartphones and digital attachment

Emotions in worlds beyond

• Past futures
• Heritage
• Post-global realities
• Identity and community formation
• Rights and justice
• Public discourse

Emotions, the non-human and post-human

• Nature
• Animals
• Ecologies

Proposals for papers, panel presentations and innovative communication formats are all welcome. Please send a 250-word abstract, a presentation title, and a 100-word biography (only Word documents or rtf files accepted) to emotions@uwa.edu.au by 2 February, 2018.

Bursaries

The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions is able to offer a limited number of bursaries to Honours students, Postgraduate students and unwaged Early Career Researchers whose paper have been accepted for presentation at the conference. The bursaries are intended to partially reimburse costs associated with attending the conference.

Bursaries of up to AUD500 for Australian applicants may be awarded, based on the following criteria:

The applicant is:

1. an Honours student currently enrolled at a recognised institution OR a postgraduate student currently enrolled at a recognised institution OR an unwaged early career researcher;
2. able to demonstrate particular need of funding assistance;
3. AND has submitted a paper proposal with the application.

Applicants will be informed of the committee’s decision by 2 March, 2018.

“Transition(s): concept, methods and case studies (14th–17th centuries)”
International PhD Students’ Meetings: Part 1
Liège, Belgium
30-31 January, 2018

The Research Unit Transitions. Middle Ages and First Modernity (University of Liège) associated with the research laboratory TRAME (Texts, Representations, Archaeology and Memory from Antiquity to the Renaissance) of the University of Picardie Jules Verne and with the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance of the University François Rabelais (Tours) on the occasion of International PhD Students’ Meetings in three parts. Implemented by PhD students of these three institutions, the aim of the meetings is to enable exchange and discussion between PhD students, junior researchers and skilled colleagues. The first of these three meetings will be held in Liège on Tuesday January 30th and Wednesday January 31st, 2018.

From the Middle Ages until the upheavals brought about by Galilean science, Europe underwent a period of unceasing questioning which challenged the political balance and its legitimacy, shook the foundations of confessional unity, and expanded the limits of knowledge and of creation. In an attempt to transcend the inherited divisions of the long historiographical tradition, the Research Unit Transitions. Middle Ages and First Modernity (http://web.philo.ulg.ac.be/transitions/fr/) explores these constant transformations in the Western and in the Mediterranean Basin. Open to Medievalists and Modernists, the Research Unit promotes confrontation between research practices, original collaboration, and the sharing of results in a transdisciplinary way. Furthermore, it attempts to show several factors which contributed to the construction of the social and cultural frameworks by which we define ourselves even today.

In January 2018, the Liège meetings will focus on the theme “Transition(s): concept, methods and case studies (14th–17th centuries)”. Nowadays, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research on the whole tend to delete categories and traditional historical periodization in favor of transversal approach of objects, phenomena, genders, forms and ideas. The concept of “Transition” is linked to the idea of “passage” and it may be defined as “the passage from one state to another” a “degree or an intermediate state” (Trésor de la langue française). From their own research objects, participants will be asked to think on this concept, its acceptability and its relevance toward those of “Mutation”, “Change”, “Transformation”, “Modification”, “Revolution” and “Metamorphosis”. Thereby, it aims to renew the debate on the methods and theoretical ways which mark all disciplinary fields presented in those meetings.

How does one develop a methodology and an analytic grid allowing the study of objects, practices and behaviours positioned between two elements, between two historical periods, between two trends, between two styles, between two manners to do, to see, to write, to think and to believe? Also, how does one get out of this idea of “between two”? Do Transition have breaks, innovations, transfers, exchanges or flow aspects? Do these objects really depict the passage from a practice, a period, from one style to another, or is it actually because the Researcher sees them as doing so? Is the concept of “Transition” a new category, a new pragmatic approach, but nevertheless fruitful? Is this concept involved in advances in our disciplines, and why?

This methodological approach may be considered by concrete questions about the linguistic, cultural, historical, artistic transitions which happened between the 14th and the 17th centuries in Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, whether through actors and their works (objects, texts), ideas, and / or the areas within which they lived.

Lectures will be the subject of transdisciplinary discussions. They should not last more twenty minutes and they will be given in either French, English or Italian. Each lecture will then be followed by a short debate with the audience.

The organising committee expects the PhD students’ proposals for Friday the 15 September, 2017 at the latest. They should be addressed to the RU Transitions (journeesdoctorales.transitions@gmail.com) as an attached document that includes the personal data of the PhD student and those of the research director(s), as well as the title of the thesis, the title of the lecture, the year of registration as a PhD student and, finally, a fifteen-line summary of the proposed lecture. Proposals are to be written in French, English or Italian. Candidates will be informed of the approval or the rejection of their proposal by the 15th of October 2017.

Each PhD student is invited to contact his own institution about the possibility of valorising his or her participation in the study days within the framework of their doctoral training (attestation, ECTS credits, etc.). At the end of the seminar, the organizers will provide a document certifying the active participation of the PhD student in the meeting. Furthermore, in view of its limited financial resources, RU Transitions will not be able to bear the cost of mobility and accommodation for Participants.

Organising Committee : Emilie Corswarem, Sébastien Damoiseaux, Frédéric Degroote, Aurore Drécourt, Adelaïde Lambert, Anne-Sophie Laruelle, Julie Piront

Scientific Committee : Emilie Corswarem, Annick Delfosse, Laure Fagnart, Marie-Elisabeth Henneau, Nicola Morato, Julie Piront