Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 278.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2022-12-02 08:07:33+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: cfp: Imaging Across Time (Taipei, Taiwan)
CALL FOR PAPERS:
The 2023 Wenshan International Conference
Imaging Across Time
at the National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
18 November 2023
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University
Professor Dennis Tenen, Columbia University
The domain of the page—or more contemporaneously, the screen—is a
representational form of mental imagery. Indeed, textual surfaces are so
ubiquitous in today’s culture that we sometimes forget that each arose
from an internal inclination and proceeded into manifestation through a
process culturally inscribed, but with one underlying, even fundamental,
character at play: to preserve information outside the body so that it
can be perceived either by ourselves or others at some later date. Yet
so intricately instantiated is this association between our mental life
and textual representation that we would be deceived to conflate the two
or give one absolute precedence over the other. The question we seek to
ask is this: what is the state of the image, or imaging, as mode, as
practice, as ontology? Before the postmodern turn, the mind had primacy.
But scholarship in the humanities has long-since changed, seeking to
question the supposed seamlessness of degree between the mind and the
external world of visual images. For when we look with adjusted eye,
fissures emerge—and images, even those most dearly held, appear
consigned to an empire of signs that we did not choose, though they are
our own, and we seem to have no choice but to think and represent
according to their dictation.
In 1991, Bruno Latour notably warned of giving absolute precedence to
texts, of making “language a law unto itself, a law governing itself and
its own world,” so that “the primacy of the signifier” was all that
mattered. From this point of view, texts no longer “conveyed meaning
from Nature to Speakers, or vice versa. Texts and languages make
meaning; they even produce references internal to discourse and to the
speakers installed within discourse.” Latour, of course, was not
alone—and in the intervening years, many have attempted to reframe the
post-structural textual dilemma in a range of ways. We may consider the
ways in which “computational culture” has led to a “fundamental
reshaping of the sign,” as Dennis Tenen contends (2017). While
post-structural critique rightly understood that the sign is part of a
ubiquitous cultural scaffolding in which we are always immersed, Tenen
gives such a picture greater material and virtual shape. Texts are not
just on-screen, where they can be viewed; the “word is in the wires,”
part of an invisible, but physical architecture all around us. Thus, the
word “spreads across servers, routers, and data centers [ ...] where
forces of capital and control intervene to monitor and monetize.”
In other vein, John May (2019) warns us neither to conflate electronic
images with drawing, nor to confuse the technics that came before with
the emerging practices of our computational age. May laments that the
“lingering traditions of humanism” prevent us from becoming “less
unknowingly immersed, and more deeply aware of ourselves as permanently
and originally technical beings— and with that awareness, more able to
address the implications of our technicity, for ourselves and for the
world.” While we may heed such a warning, we might nonetheless question
whether humanism is so easily eclipsed by the conditions of our present
technicity. Are the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual heritages
simply artifacts of a bygone time, or do they persist in a manner much
more fundamental to who we are and may become?
If these approaches have a unifying theme, it is the past, present,
and future character of the image or imaging as technical and cultural
practice across the centuries. We invite all papers that grapple in some
manner with this theme and particularly encourage those that express an
intercultural point of view. Possible paper topics include, but are not
limited to, the following:
• Digital Humanities and the changing role of literature
• Big Data, computation and literary study
• The New Formalism as methodology and/or rival to historicism
• Literature, social space, and intersubjectivity
• Romantic reconsiderations of the image
• Ancient signification
• Alchemy and Early Modern science
• Myth, magic, and signs
• Self-reflexive textual practices, ancient and modern
• History of the book
• Imaging the Anthropocene
• The role of imaging in the representation of gender, race, and class
• The advent and future of the moving image
• Shakespeare and Digital Humanities
• Imaging in Shakespeare
• Visualizing Shakespeare
We invite proposals for individual papers or collaborative panels from
academics in the humanities and social sciences to present on these or
any related topic. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, with title and
five keywords, including short CVs (name, title, affiliations, selected
publications, contacts) should be sent to the committee at
2023wsconf@gmail.com by January 15, 2023.
This conference is organized by the Department of English at National
Chengchi University, in partnership with the Taiwan Shakespeare
Association, the EARN (Enlightenment and Romanticism Network), and The
Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture, a special issue of which will
feature selected papers delivered at the conference.
Conference Website: https://sites.google.com/view/2023wsconf
Organizing Committee:
Hsiang-chun Chu (National Changhua University of Education)
John Michael Corrigan (National Chengchi University)
Estelle Jiang (National Chengchi University)
T.J. Sellari (National Chengchi University)
Yi-Chin Shih (National Changhua University of Education)
Important Dates:
Abstract submission deadline: January 15, 2023
Abstract acceptance notification: February 28, 2023
Conference date: November 18, 2023
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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