The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture invites proposals for papers to be presented at a 2-day conference, January 26–27, 2017, at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.
Cities are defined by their complex network of busy streets and the diverse multitudes of busy people that populate and animate those streets through their physical presence and bodily actions. The human bodies and movements we find in the streets often differ dramatically – the elegant flâneur or strolling window-shopper versus the homeless beggars who make the pavement their bed, the crowds who fill the streets in protest and the patrolling law-enforcement officers who police them. If cities are shaped by human bodies, then those bodies are reciprocally shaped by the spaces, rhythms, and logics of city life. What are the somaesthetic qualities of urban living, its affordances and challenges (from better cultural and medical services to the cramped quarters and polluted air that many city dwellers must endure)? What are the somatic images of urban life? What paths or models of somaesthetic thinking can help us bring the rich diversity of city life into a more rewarding harmony that remains dynamically progressive? We invite abstracts that address these questions from the perspectives of the visual arts, literature, urbanism, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics.
Selected papers may be developed for publication in The Journal of Somaesthetics (journals.aau.dk/index.php/JOS) or in an edited book based on the conference papers.
Abstracts of 250 words, and a current CV, should be sent electronically as attachments. The deadline has been extended to no later than November 13, 2016, and should be emailed to Richard Shusterman at bodymindculture@fau.edu. Please direct conference inquiries to the same address. Further information about the conference will be made available at www.fau.edu/bodymindculture, where you can also consult the programs of our prior international conferences. Prospective speakers will be notified by early December, 2016.