Vigils of Absent Time: Essays on Mourning in Literature and the Arts

3rd International Seminar on Literature and Emotions

Call for Papers

Date: April 23–24, 2025

Location: School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon (in-person and online)

Keynote Speakers: Birgit Neumann (Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf); additional speakers to be announced.

According to American psychologist Paul Ekman, mourning is one of the six basic and universal emotions that can be found across almost all cultures. However, this emotion has not received the same level of attention in the sciences. Discussions of mourning beyond practical grief therapy often prove challenging. In cinema, mourning is frequently portrayed through the traditional, yet outdated, framework of the five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). Few works explore mourning as a complex process, blending better and worse days, often tied to specific, concrete events but not always material ones. This condition is also represented through melancholia or its direct connection to death. Yet mourning occurs not only because of death, nor is it solely associated with melancholia. Grief is predominantly studied within psychological fields, including research into pathological or complicated grief therapy and the emerging discipline of the psychology of emotions, which examines the aesthetic allure of mourning.

In the arts, however, relatively few studies focus on this emotion. The lack of attention in other academic discourses may be attributed to the characteristics of grief itself: “Mourning, as we imagine it, turns light into darkness and steals the joy from everything it touches. It is overwhelming and unrelenting,” notes George A. Bonanno. Similarly, Erich Kästner observed, “[i]t feels as if the soul is unsettled.” However, grief is also a physical experience and a profound source of artistic creativity, as Peter Stamm suggests: “Happiness doesn’t write stories.”

This seminar, part of the Aesthetics of Memory and Emotions project at the Centre for Comparative Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, aims to showcase how mourning is explored in literature and the arts, becoming a foundation for artistic creativity and an aesthetic principle. The event is not exclusively focused on literature but also seeks to investigate the portrayal of grief in other artistic fields. Contributions will be compiled in a publication following the seminar.

Proposals (up to 300 words) for 20-minute presentations and brief author biographies (up to 150 words) should be submitted by February 10, 2025, to: labirintosdomalflul@gmail.com.

Languages: Portuguese and English

Registration Fee: €80 (waived for invited speakers and students); €40 for online participants.

Potential Topics Include:

• The aesthetics of mourning

• Eternal grief

• Mourning and justice/injustice

• “Sad” arts and the sublime

• Mourning and consolation

• Grief in poetry

• Mourning in cinema/photography

• Mourning and guilt

• Denied grief/the impossibility of mourning