Old Email Archive

digest 2006-10-09 #001.txt

litsci-l Digest Mon, 09 Oct 2006

Table of contents:

1. CFP: From the Brain to Human Culture confrence, April 2007, Bucknell
- "Carol Colatrella" 
2. live chat with John Cayley 10/9 (Leonardo Electronic Almanac
	Discussion) - "Charles Baldwin" 


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Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:35:25 +0000
From: "Carol Colatrella" 
Subject: CFP: From the Brain to Human Culture confrence, April 2007,
Bucknell

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?�us: 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.


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Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:22:19 -0400
From: "Charles Baldwin" 
Subject: live chat with John Cayley 10/9 (Leonardo Electronic Almanac
	Discussion)

_Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 5_

:: Live chat with John Cayley about writing in immersive VR, new media
poetics,
and other topics.
:: Chat date: Monday, October 9. 
:: Chat time: 11am West Coat US / 2pm East Coast US / 8pm Paris FR / 4am
Melbourne AU
:: LEAD is an open forum around the New Media Poetics special Issue of
Leonardo
Electronic Almanac.

Chat instructions are below. The LEA website includes instructions and a
complete list of upcoming chats:
http://www.leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n05-06/forum.asp. 

John Cayley is a London-based poet, translator, publisher and
bookdealer. Links
to his writing in networked and programmable media are at
www.shadoof.net/in.
His last printed book of poems, adaptations and translations was Ink
Bamboo
(London: Agenda & Belew, 1996). Cayley was the winner of the Electronic
Literature Organization's Award for Poetry 2001 (www.eliterature.org).
He is an
Honorary Research Associate in the Department of English, Royal Holloway
College, University of London, and has taught and directed research at
the
University of California San Diego and Brown University, amongst other
institutions. His most recent work explores ambient poetics in
programmable
media, with parallel theoretical interventions concerning the role of
code in
writing and the temporal properties of textuality (bibliographic links
are
available from the shadoof site).

::

How to participate in the live chat?

Live chats will use Jabber (http://www.jabber.org/), an open, secure,
ad-free
alternative to consumer IM services like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo. It is
the
most widely-used open source instant messaging and chat protocol. The
New Media
Poetics chatroom is on the jabber.org public server under the name
"leanmp" and
the password "leoalmanac." Follow three easy steps and you are ready to
join
the chat:

1) Download and install a Jabber client. A list of recommended Jabber
clients
is available at the following url:
http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml. For Windows users, we
recommend
the Exodus client. For Macintosh users, please use Psi, as the other
recommended clients do not consistently register on the Jabber server.
For
Linux, Psi is also available, but the other recommended clients should
work as
well.

2) Register as a user on the jabber.org public server. When you first
open your
Jabber client you will see a start screen. If you do not see this
screen, or if
you are not starting the client for the first time, the screen is also
available in a pull down menu as Account Details or Preferences
(depending on
your Jabber client). Enter a username, password, and server. Use any
username
and password you choose. Enter ?�jabber.org?� as the server. When you
register,
if your proposed username is taken, you need to choose another. Check
the
button for "new account" or to automatically register the account
(depending on
your client). Note: you may not be able to register if you are not using
one of
the recommended clients listed above. Hit OK or Login. Your Jabber
client will
then automatically register you and connect you to the jabber.org
server.

3) At this point, you are ready to chat, but there is one more step: you
must
join the chatroom. Select "Join a Chat Room" from your client's pull
down menu.
Enter the name of the chat room: leanmp. Enter the password: leoalmanac.
You
can also specify a nickname or "handle" to use while in the chatroom.
Hit
"Finish" or "OK" to join the chat. The chat room window will open and
you are
ready to go! Note: the chat room may not be available outside of
scheduled chat
times.

Additional information is available at the Jabber userguide:
http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/.


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End of litsci-l Digest Mon, 09 Oct 2006
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