The Somaesthetics Center of East China Normal University (Shanghai) and the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture of Florida Atlantic University invite paper proposals for a conference on “Somaesthetics in Fashion, Craft, and the New Media” that will be held at ECNU’s Shanghai Campus on May 8-9, 2020.

Somaesthetics was introduced as a new name to revive and productively integrate some valuable old ways of thinking. This conference highlights both the traditional and the new in its central topics. Fashion is a key feature of somatic style, and although typically focused on novel trendiness, it constantly references and even reverts to retro styles for inspiration. Craft, even in our age of advanced industrial technology, maintains a cherished relationship of intimacy with the body and enduring aesthetic traditions through the essential work of the human touch. This extends somatic energy from the craftsperson to her handiwork, even when using contemporary tools and materials. New media technology illuminates other fascinating tensions between tradition and innovation, promising to transform our somaesthetic capacities and experience beyond the actual limits of our physical bodies. This is a bold new virtual world, but one that is still largely shaped by values and ideologies drawn from our traditional ways of embodied living and artistic or cultural expression. Indeed some of the new interactive media technology aims at promoting greater appreciative awareness of our natural (i.e. non-technologized) somatic experience. Our conference is especially interested in papers that explore somaesthetic aspects of one or more of the three topics of fashion, craft, and the new media. We will consider questions such as: How should somaesthetic theory and practice inform fashion design and fashion criticism? What are the significant somaesthetic aspects of craft, and how could somaesthetic cultivation influence craft’s theory and practice? How does craft relate to ritual traditions that have important somatic dimensions? How do the new media transform our understanding of somatic experience and our traditional artistic genres? How can somaesthetics help us develop an ethical stance toward new transformations in fashion and media technology?

Besides papers focused on the three featured conference topics, we will consider papers devoted to other issues central to the field of somaesthetics.


Abstracts of 250 words and a current CV should be submitted electronically no later than January 15, 2020.

Submissions in Chinese should be sent to: Prof. Wang Feng at wang99feng@126.com

For the call for papers in Chinese click here 

Submissions in English should be sent to: Prof. Ken Holloway khollow4@fau.edu and to bodymindculture@fau.edu

Please direct conference inquiries to the same addresses.

Selected papers in English may be developed for publication in The Journal of Somaesthetics or in an edited book based on the conference papers and published in Brill’s series Studies in Somaesthetics.


Further information about the conference in English will be made available at this link, where you can also consult the programs of the Center’s prior international conferences. Prospective speakers should be notified by March 2020.