University of St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies in association with the Institute of European Cultural Identity Studies
An International conference at St Andrews,
Thursday 28 June – Sunday 1 July 2012
CALL FOR PANELS AND PAPERS
The term “humanism” has been used with a variety of meanings and associated with some significant moments in intellectual history. In its widest sense of a discourse that speaks for all of humanity, for “being human” and for “human-centredness”, it has now been in crisis for several decades, accused of exhibiting a range of biases in areas that include gender, race and ethnicity as well as haughtiness about the place of humans in the greater scheme of nature. The aim of the conference is to problematize the representation of human values, identities and behaviours in literature, film and other cultural products, from the Renaissance to the present day.
Organisers:
- Professor Nigel Rapport, Director, Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies
- Dr Gustavo San Román, Director, Institute of European Cultural Identity Studies
Further details
The term “humanism” has been used with a variety of meanings and associated with some significant moments in intellectual history. Traceable to ancient times in Protagoras’ “Man is the measure of all things” and central to the renewal enterprise of the Renaissance and to the optimism of the Enlightenment, it was popularised during the nineteenth century and reached its contemporary peak with existentialism in the twentieth. In its widest sense of a discourse that speaks for all of humanity, for “being human” and for “human-centredness”, it has now been in crisis for several decades, accused of exhibiting a range of biases in areas that include gender, race and ethnicity as well as haughtiness about the place of humans in the greater scheme of nature. Its correlates in politics and economics have also suffered significant attacks from critics of liberalism and capitalism. The crisis of the humanist project has been highlighted in recent years through new coinages such as trans-humanism and post-humanism. Still, for some thinkers humanism continues to be the best form of speaking about humankind in general terms, whilst granting that the criticisms must be taken on board. The alternatives, it is argued, seem to lead into a fragmentarism which prevents us from seeing the human wood for the sub-cultural trees.
The aim of the conference is to problematise the representation of human values, identities and behaviours in literature, film and other cultural products, from the Renaissance to the present day. We call for theoretical accounts of the origins and vicissitudes of an aspiration for a universal discourse as well as critical readings of its variegated realisations in texts across European languages and periods. We also seek textual and theoretical investigations into current ideas about being human, so we summon specialists in eco-criticism, post-human aesthetics and cyborg literature as well as anthropologists, philosophers, theologians and psychologists, on problems such as self-knowledge, cultural and national identity, human nature, moral universalism and relativism, and the longevity or precarious status of values such as community, hospitality, dignity, modesty and conversation. An ultimate achievement of this interdisciplinary gathering may well turn out to be catching a glimpse of a revived, more self-conscious, more sensitive and more durable New Humanism. In an era of globalised representations of values, selfhood and identity, the topic of the scope of “being human” has inspired a number of recent works on self-help and wellbeing (most recently Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor’s On Kindness, 2009) and some serious academic debate, such as a special issue of the journal Annali d’Italianistica (no. 26, 2008) which will be one of the reference points of the present enterprise.
Possible panels include:
- Humanism and colonialism in Africa and the Americas
- Humanism and eco-criticism
- Humanism vis-à-vis culture, community and nation
- Humanism after the Shoah
- Moral universalism and relativism
- Humanism and terrorism
- Human rights, individual and collective
- Liberalism and communitarianism
- Representation of values or behaviours (e.g. kindness, modesty, hospitality) in European and related literature from the Renaissance to the present day, either within a given language or a given period or across these
- The essay on national identity (e.g. on the nature or undefinability of Frenchhood or Africanness; on the hopes and failures of the “new man” project in Latin America after the Cuban Revolution)
- The body, gender and sexuality (including romanticism, eroticism, pornography, alternative sexualities)
- The mind, the self and connections with others (conversation, love, friendship, hatred)
- Representations of the self and identity in blogs and other internet media
- Human nature and values in cyborg literature
- Monsters in literature
- Existentialism revisited
- The avant-garde and Anti-Humanism
- Post-humanism
To suggest a paper or a panel (this could be for 3, 4 or 7 speakers, or a combination of your choice, such as main speaker and two respondents) please send an abstract of around 200 words, together with a brief CV, to the organizers:
Dr Gustavo San Román, Director, Institute of European Cultural Identity Studies, School of Modern Languages, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK
and/or
Professor Nigel Rapport, Director, Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies, Department of Social Anthropology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK