cfp.english.upenn.edu

We are pleased to invite you to participate to the International Summer School “Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind”. The event will take place from
26th to 30th August 2013 and will be hosted by Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg - Institute for Advanced Study Delmenhorst (Germany).

The Summer School provides a unique opportunity for Master students, PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and senior academic researchers to
take part in a lively exhange of ideas within an international and interdisciplinary community of experts in aesthetics and the embodied mind thesis.

Its aim is to bring together and integrate the multiple and complementary ways of investigating, analyzing and discussing the refutation of the Cartesian mind-body dichotomy and its consequences for aesthetics beyond art theory.

The embodied mind thesis that is usually traced back to the work The Embodied Mind by Varela & Thompson & Rosch denies a separation of mind and body, sees meaning, reason and imagination as embodied and ties reason to emotion. In other words, experience and cognition are bodily mediated and depend on the sensorimotor capacities of individuals embedded in a biological, psychological and cultural context that interact with the environment in a relation of co-determination.

Following the embodied mind thesis in his work The Meaning of the Body philosopher Mark Johnson argues that aesthetics is not just art theory. Rather, it should be considered to be the study of everything that goes into the human capacity to make and experience the bodily pre-linguistic cognitive, emotional and sensory-perceptual conditions of meaning constitution having its origins in the organic activities of living creatures and in their organism-environment transactions.

The School will present and discuss cutting-edge research that highlights the link of the following research fields to the embodied mind thesis in
aesthetics:

■ pragmatist aesthetics
■ neuroaesthetics
■ phenomenological aesthetics
■ empirical study of literary aesthetics
■ experimental aesthetics
■ psychology of aesthetics
■ analytical aesthetics
■ computational aesthetics
■ technology and aesthetics
■ robotics and aesthetics
■ HCI and aesthetics
■ Embodied emotions and aesthetics

Participants will present and discuss their work in group work sessions. The language of the Summer School is English.

The Faculty consists of the speakers listed in the Programme of the Summer School you find on the website of the School: https://sites.google.com/site/aestheticsandtheembodiedmind/

The Faculty and the Summer School will have some guests:

■ The closing lecture Embodiment, Meaning and Emotion will be given by Tom Ziemke (University of Skövde,Sweden)

■ Agnieszka Jelewska, Michał Krawczak and Partyk Lichota (HAT Center (Interdisciplinary Research Center Humanities/Art/Technology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland) will lead the guest workshop 1 with the title Somatic Interface. Membrane Communication. Sound Ecology

■ Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (University of Oregon) and Bert Johnstone (University of Oregon) will lead the guest workshop 2 with the title How to make the Familiar Strange: Phenomenological Insights into the Emotional and Movement Dynamics of Aesthetics.

■ Barbara Montero will lead the Guest Workshop CUNY New York with the title Aesthetic Effortlessness.

Prospective participants are invited to send their abstract (max. 300 words), a short CV indicating their publications (where possible) and the main
achievements, their affiliation and a motivation letter to the following address: aestheticsandtheembodiedmind1[at]gmail.com

Applicants will be chosen based on their academic qualification, motivation and scientific interest.

DEADLINE for abstract submission: 15th December 2012. THIS DEADLINE WILL NOT BE EXTENDED.

Notifications of acceptance or rejection: 5th January 2013

Registration: from 15th January to 15th May 2013

For any further questions please contact Alfonsina Scarinzi: alfonsinascarinzi[at]googlemail.com