Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers
"The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty," wrote the poet-playwright-novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty's relevance, meanings, and the spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been challenged, called a search for Eldorado. Some find no beauty in life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty? Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory. Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty 'project' will explore, assess, and map a number of key core themes. Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues to any of the following themes:
- Defining beauty
- Studying beauty
- Power of beauty
- History of beauty
- Politics of beauty
- Experience of beauty
- Pursuit of beauty
- Expression of beauty
- The quality of beauty
- Beauty and emotion
- Look of beauty
- Making beauty
- Beauty in nature
- Beauty and desire
- Beauty and culture
- Beauty subcultures
- Anti-beauty movements
- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.
- Beauty, consumer culture, and cultural capital
- Beauty collectors
- Beauty business
- Representations of beauty
- Beauty in a globalized world
- Beauty in the 21st century
Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th July 2011. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
Emails should be entitled: Beauty Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Professor of Sociology, Dept. of Social Sciences, College of Letters and Sciences, National University, CA, USA
Dr. Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details about the project, please click here.
For further details about the conference, please click here.
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