Thursday, January 19, 2012

That horrible moment when...

You know the drill. You've submitted your thesis to the examiners, or your essay or book has gone through final proof stage when ... you discover a book published ten years ago on exactly your topic that for some reason you never came across and have taken no account of.

Resigned to the worst, I trudge over to the library to find the offending, newly discovered volume, and turned with foreboding

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Audio, video, Wagner: face, dream, Melancholia [SPOILER ALERT]

Last week, three immersion experiences: painting, experimental video-audio art, and cinema.

I am sitting for (I learn that "to" is also acceptable, though somewhat precious) a painter friend who is returning to portraiture after a few years painting in other genres. I sat for Kristin many years ago, and am once more enjoying the afternoons in her studio. We used to be neighbours and regular

Monday, January 2, 2012

Call for Papers: "The Making of the Humanities III"

The third international conference on the history of the humanities, "The Making of the Humanities III", will take place at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, from 1 till 3 November 2012.

Goal of the Conference
This is the third of a biennially organized conference that brings together scholars and historians of humanities disciplines to draw the outlines for a comparative history of the humanities. Although histories of single humanities disciplines already exist for a long time, the history of the humanities as a whole has only very recently been investigated, and the first monographs have just appeared.

Theme of the 2012 Conference
The first conference on the history of the humanities, held in 2008, discussed the early modern period (1400-1800), resulting in the edited book “The Making of the Humanities” (AUP 2010). The second conference, held in 2010, focused on the transition from early modern to modern disciplines (1600-1900), and a volume of papers is currently being prepared for publication. The theme of the meeting in 2012 will be The Making of the Modern Humanities, focusing on the period 1850-2000, as well as four general panel themes that across all periods (see below). Topics include all aspects of the history of philology, linguistics, literary studies, musicology, historiography, art history, theatre studies, (new) media studies and other humanities disciplines, with an emphasis on their mutual influences, and their interaction with the other sciences.

Conference Panels
In addition to the theme of this year’s meeting, there will be four general conference panels that cover all periods, areas and disciplines:

Panel I: Objectivity in the Humanities
Panel II: Methodology in the Humanities
Panel III: The Search for Patterns in the Humanities
Panel IV: The Sciences and the Humanities

Invited Speakers
Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
John Joseph (University of Edinburgh)
Glenn Most (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)
John Pickstone (University of Manchester)
Jo Tollebeek (University of Leuven)

Abstract Submissions
Papers can be submitted to the general theme or to one of the panels. Please indicate on your abstract whether you want your paper to be considered for the general theme or for one of the panels or both.
Send your abstract of maximally 400 words to: HistoryHumanities@gmail.com
Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 June 2012

Registration and Accommodation
Registration for the conference will be possible from June 1st 2012 onwards. The conference fee will be kept to an absolute minimum, and will be waived for students. Except for the invited speakers, the conference organization will not pay for accommodation. Information on accommodation will be posted later this summer.

Organization
Huizinga Institute of Cultural History (Working Group History of the Humanities)
Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam

Rens Bod (University of Amsterdam)
Jaap Maat (University of Amsterdam)
Thijs Weststeijn (University of Amsterdam)