2020 Conferences
Life Philosophy and Somatic Action
The Center co-sponsored a conference on "Life Philosophy and Somatic Action" hosted by Fudan University's Life Aesthetics Center and held in Shanghai October 30-November 1, 2020. For the conference program (in Chinese) click here. For the conference report (in Chinese), click here.
"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 above and the 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.
"Somaesthetics in Fashion, Craft, and the New Media"
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.
*This conference did not occur due to Covid-19.