"Pathologies" Conference

PATHOLOGIES

Questions of embodiment in literature, arts and sciences

The Inaugural International Conference of the

Glamorgan Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science

August 20-21, 2007

Plenary Speakers:

Tim Armstrong, Kelly Hurley & Jonathan Sawday

The newly formed Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science, based at the University of Glamorgan, would welcome papers on topics falling under the title of ‘Pathologies’. Abstracts of no more than one page of A4 (approx 400-500 words) should be sent to all of the Conference organisers, and Co-Directors of the Centre, Professor Andrew Smith, Professor Jeff Wallace and Dr Martin Willis by February 28, 2007. Decisions will be made in March 2007.

To consider how the body has been pathologized is to ask questions of what it means to be human. As the originating site of humanity the body (extending from the individual to society and nation) is the physical, metaphorical and philosophical place for the inscription of selfhood, identity, normality and change. The multiple pathologies of the body invite us to reflect upon bodily conditions and behaviours that mark out the boundaries of the individual, the social and the national as well as their transgressions. Where does the self begin and end? How do we construct normality, deformity, and monstrosity? How do culture, society and the individual relate and connect across the many pathologies that invade, infect, distress and reconstruct the human?

This conference invites the submission of abstracts for 20 minute papers dealing with pathologies (broadly defined) across the intersections of literature and science or the arts and science. Papers may deal with any historical, artistic or literary period. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

- Representations of disease

- The Socio-politics of medical research

- The art and science of early modern medicine/pathology

- Dissection

- The body and the machine

- Gothic bodies

- Cultural pathologies of identity

- Pathologizing gender through science

- Neurasthenia and modernism

- The degenerate body

Please send your abstract, together with your name, university affiliation and position to all of asmith5@glam.ac.uk, jwallace@glam.ac.uk, mwillis@glam.ac.uk or alternatively to one of the organisers at: Glamorgan Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science (RCLAS), Science Imagined Conference, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL, UK.