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digest 2006-10-07 #001.txt

litsci-l Digest Sat, 07 Oct 2006

Table of contents:

1. From the Brain to Human Culture - "Clarke, Bruce" 


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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 13:17:34 -0500
From: "Clarke, Bruce" 
Subject: From the Brain to Human Culture

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

Lewisburg, PA, USA 
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 (20 minutes) and/or panels (maximum of four speakers) 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 Aper?Åus: 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

	jchunter@bucknell.edu   
	

Submissions via regular mail will be accepted if necessary. Comments and
inquiries to the above address are welcome. 


DEADLINE: December 15th, 2006.

 
--Professor Bruce Clarke
1st VP, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
Program Chair, SLSA 2006
http://www.dactyl.org/SLSA.htm  
nyc.slsa2006@gmail.com 
 
Department of English
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/clarke/ 
bruce.clarke@ttu.edu 
office: 806 742-2500 x274
fax: 806 742-0989
cell: 806 928-9486


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End of litsci-l Digest Sat, 07 Oct 2006
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