The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center welcomes paper proposals for "The Humanities, the Neurosciences and the Brain," an interdisciplinary conference exploring the multiple accords, and discords, that characterize humanistic and neuroscientific approaches to the study of the brain. Gabrielle Starr, author of Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience, will give the keynote address. We invite papers that explore creative framings of neuroscientific inquiry through humanistic perspectives, as well as artistic explorations of inner states and mental landscapes. We also welcome presentations that raise ethical, philosophical and social questions about neuroscientific knowledge of the brain and its functioning. Interdisciplinary papers that draw from all fields of the humanities, humanistic social sciences, arts, and brain sciences are welcome. Possible topics include:

Artificial intelligence

Autism

Brain injury

Consciousness and the unconscious

Criminal justice and brain imaging

Decision-making

Dreaming

Emotional states

Historical understandings of the brain

Life stages and the brain

Literary representations of mental states

Mapping the brain

Memory and forgetting

Mental health and education

Music and the brain

Narrative and the brain

Performance and the brain

Poverty and brain development

Religious experience and the brain

Representations of the brain in popular culture

Visual arts and the brain

To participate, please send a 250-word abstract and a brief CV for consideration to ihcucsb@gmail.com by Monday, February 29, 2016. If you have questions about the conference, please contact IHC Associate Director Emily Zinn: ezinn@ihc.ucsb.edu.