Bodies of Buddhism: Somaesthetic Explorations

 

February 27-28, 2020

Boca Raton Campus of Florida Atlantic University, the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture

 

Approaching Buddhism from an embodied perspective opens new pathways for reexamining the varieties of ways that this religion has been practiced. This somaesthetic focus paints a more complete picture of how Buddhist practices connect to issues of humanism, social justice, the arts, and the art of living. This conference invites papers on Buddhism’s somatic dimensions and the body’s role in Buddhist ethics and artistic practices. Modern popular representations of Buddhists portray them as detached through peaceful meditation, untroubled by the pain and conflict brought on by life in a hectic world. However, confrontation is elemental to the world of Buddhist ethics and self-cultivation. Tension and conflict form part of the artistic process and contribute to aesthetic experience. Put simply, mud nourishes lotuses. One aim of the conference is to explore this positive dimension of dissonance in Buddhist thought and practice, but our call is open to other somaesthetic perspectives on the bodies of Buddhism. The poster for the conference can be found here and the provisional program can be found here.

 

Press release can be found here

 

Interested participants should send a paper title, abstract, and brief bio to Dr. Kenneth W. Holloway at khollow4@fau.edu.edu and at bodymindculture@fau.edu.edu prior to October 1, 2019. Notifications of acceptances will be sent out November 1, 2019. The culmination of this conference will be the production of an edited volume, which will be published by the Studies in Somaesthetics Series at Brill.