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The Stimulated Body and the Arts: The Nervous
System and Nervousness in the History of
Aesthetics
Venue: Hatfield College, Durham
Dates: 17th – 18th February
2011
Keynote Speaker: Professor George Rousseau
Organised by the Centre for the History of
Medicine and Disease
Durham University, UK and a Wellcome funded
International Interdisciplinary
Conference
To view
the provisional programme please click
here.
Conference details:
This conference will discuss the history of
the relationship between aesthetics and medical
understandings of the body. Today’s vogue for
neurological accounts of artistic emotions has a long
pedigree. Since George Rousseau’s pioneering work
underlined the importance of models of the nervous
system in eighteenth-century aesthetics, the examination
of physiological explanations in aesthetics has become a
highly productive field of interdisciplinary research.
Drawing on this background, the conference aims to
illuminate the influence that different medical models
of physiology and the nervous system have had on
theories of aesthetic experience. How have aesthetic
concepts (for instance, imagination or genius) be
grounded medically? What effect did the shift from
animal spirits to modern neurophysiology have on
aesthetics?
The medical effects of culture were not
always regarded as positive. The second focus of the
conference will be the supposed ability of excessive
reading, music and so on to ‘over-stimulate’ nerves and
cause nervousness, mental and physical illness,
homosexuality and even death. It will consider questions
regarding the effects of various theories of
neuropathology and psychopathology on the concept of
pathological culture. What kinds of culture could lead
to such over-stimulation? How was this medical critique
of culture related to moral objections and changes in
gender relations, politics and society? How was it
linked to medical concern about lack of attention and
willpower?
This interdisciplinary conference brings
together scholars from seven countries working in a wide
range of fields, including not only the history of
medicine but also in subjects such as art history,
languages and musicology.
Speakers will include:
Penelope Gouk (Manchester),
Bernardino Fantini (Geneva), Marieke Hendrikson
(Leiden), Aris Sarafianos (Ionannina, Greece), Carolyn
Purnell (Chicago), Manuela Schwartz (Magdeburg), Stefano
Cracolici (Durham), Pilar Leon Sanz (Navarra), Eva
Siebenborn (Bochum), Wiebke Thormaehlen (Southampton),
Zoe Svendsen (Cambridge), Leo Mellor (Cambridge), Glyn
Salton-Cox (Yale), Sabine Blackmore (Humboldt, Berlin),
Tomas Macsotay Bunt (Leeds), Bernd Boesel (Vienna),
Simon Pawley (UCL), Johanna Conterio (Harvard), Susan
Lanzoni (Wellesley), Ingrid Sykes (Warwick), Tobias
Leibold (Bochum), Darren Wagner (York).
Please direct all enquiries to:
James.kennaway@durham.ac.uk
Organisers:
Dr James Kennaway
Professor Holger Maehle
Dr Lutz Sauerteig
Useful websites:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/chmd/
http://www.dur.ac.uk/hatfield.college/
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