2025 Conference

Atmospheres of the Spiritual: Somaesthetic Explorations

*The conference’s poster image is from the painted hand scroll “Cloudy Mountains, Misty Trees” by Mifu (1052-1107) and is used with permission from the National Palace Museum, Taiwan.

Press Release

Call for papers

*This conference is in collaboration with the Center for Cosmopolitan Culture and the Levenson Chair for Japanese History.

The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture of Florida Atlantic University invites paper proposals for a conference on “Atmospheres of the Spiritual” that is planned for December 4-5, 2025 at FAU’s Boca Raton campus. The conference call for papers is as follows:

Building on last year’s fruitful conference (“Somaesthetics of Atmosphere, generously supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund), this year’s conference will focus on “Atmospheres of the Spiritual.” Besides its climatological meaning, atmosphere indicates the pervading tone, mood, or ambience of a place, situation, or work of art. This transfer of meaning from the physical to the affective is not surprising because the enveloping air and weather shape mood and feelings as they impact the soma, the living, sentient, purposive body. Like the soma, atmosphere does not fit neatly into our common binaries of object and subject, physical and mental. Atmospheres are an in-between that challenge those rigid dualisms, as does somaesthetics. Atmospheres of the spiritual are particularly elusive to define or create, because of their nebulous intangible nature. Yet we often recognize them and somatically feel them: in experiences of ritual and meditative practice (religious or secular), in constructed spaces or sublime natural scenes, in works of art, and in moments of profound interpersonal communication and communion with our environment. Experienced atmospheres of the spiritual are often powerfully healing to body and mind, while forging connections between individuals and groups. Given their importance, their elusiveness, and their variety of forms and contexts (from religion to nature and art), our conference will explore atmospheres of the spiritual to improve our understanding of what they are, how they function, how their effects might be measured, and how they might be designed and deployed to improve our lives and world.

The conference is open to contributions from diverse disciplinary perspectives in the humanities (including medical humanities), social sciences, and the arts. Selected papers may be developed for publication in The Journal of Somaesthetics or in an edited book based on the conference papers to be published in the Brill book series Studies in Somaesthetics.

Please email your abstract (250-300 words) and CV to shuster1@fau.edu and to bodymindculture@gmail.com. The deadline for submission of abstracts is August 30, 2025. Notifications of acceptance are planned for September 30th, 2025.

Conference Registration

Space for our conference is very limited. If you would like to attend, please fill out this registration form before November 24, 2025. Due to limited availability, registration does not guarantee admission. We will contact you if there is space for your attendance. Our conference will be held at the FAU Campus in Boca Raton, Florida.