Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities
Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
1–3 July 2020
Interconnectivity is defined as the state or quality of being connected
together: it often involves sets of cause-and-effect interconnections that
operate between and within peoples and places. By definition, inter
connectivity crosses and challenges physical or abstract boundaries: it
emphasises that no object of study can be viewed in isolation as local events
can have global outcomes. This holds with any types of research object,
including language contact and migration, cultural crossings and flows,
historical events, scientific and technological frontiers, and environmental
issues.
While interconnectivity has always taken place in human history, we now
live in times of unprecedented, fast-paced networks and connections, with
complex and unpredictable feedback loops. How does interconnectivity cut
across, challenge, and transform the perception of boundaries, be them national
borders, language barriers, local policies, environmental laws? The special
focus of the 2020 International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities
seeks to explore the transcultural dimension of interconnectivity in all aspects
of humanities. The conference invites to look at local issues in a global
perspective, and how cause-and-effect relationships cross scale from the local
to the global and from the global to the local.
We are inviting proposals for paper presentations, workshops/interactive
sessions, posters/exhibits, virtual lightning talks, virtual posters, or
colloquia addressing one of the following themes:
Theme 1: Critical Cultural Studies
Exploring ways to broaden the scope of the humanities and creating a
wider critical canvas through cultural studies. Examining critical perspectives
on academic disciplines; how traditional disciplines remain constant or must
respond to changes in humans’ relationships to each other, to society,
technology, and the environment. Considering ways of knowing, shifts in
conceptual frameworks and research methodologies. Proposing new directions for
humanities studies.
- Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary humanities
- The relationship of humanities to other knowledge domains (technology, science, economics)
- Making knowledge: research in the humanities
- Subjectivity and objectivity, truth and relativity
- Philosophy, consciousness and the meanings of meaning
- Geographical and archeological perspectives on human place and movement
- The study of humans and humanity, past and present
- The future of humanities
Theme 2: Communications and Linguistics Studies
Examining the forms and effects of human representation and
communication.
- Human representations and expression through art, media, technology, design
- Communications in human interactions
- Linguistic and cultural diversity: its nature and meanings
- Language dynamics: global English, multilingualism, language death, language revival
- New media, new messages, new meanings in the “information society”
Theme 3: Literary Humanities
Analyses of literatures and literary practices, to stabilize bodies of
work in traditions and genres, or to unsettle received expressive forms and
cultural contents. Examining changes over time in conceptual frameworks, ways
of knowing, and ways of seeing.
- Critique in literary analysis; the role of the critic; perspectives on criticism
- Conceptual frameworks (modern, postmodern, neo-liberal, colonialism, post-colonialism, etc)
- Literatures: national, global and diasporic
- Literary forms (fiction, the novel, poetry, theater, non-fiction) and genres
- Literary forms of media: photography, film, video, internet
- Identity and difference in literature
Theme 4: Civic, Political, and Community Studies
Social studies in the humanities, where the humanities meet the ‘social
sciences’. Affinities and affiliations and their impacts on relationships
within and across cultures. Issues of policy, governance, and controls over
populations within and across nations. The human condition in an era of
globalization.
- Human formations: families, institutions, organizations, states and societies
- Human expressions: values, attitudes, dispositions, sensibilities
- Human differences: gender, sexuality, families, race, ethnicity, class, (dis)ability
- Affinities: citizenship and other forms of belonging
- Globalization and its discontents
- Diversity: dialogue as a local and global imperative
- The dynamics of identity in culture
- Immigration, refugees, minorities and diaspora
- Internationalism, globalism, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism
- Human rights
- Human violence and peace
- Governance and politics in society
Theme 5: Humanities Education
On theories and practices of teaching and learning in the disciplines of
the humanities and humanistic social sciences. General and subject-specific
pedagogy.
- General and subject-specific pedagogy
- Language acquisition and language instruction
- Learning new languages (including second language instruction, multilingual)
- Professional development and teacher education
- Influence of learner characteristics on the educational process
- Education for a new humanity
2020 Special Focus: Transcultural Humanities in a Global World
Our Scope & Concerns
Following are some of the issues that are the concern of this
conference, journal collection, book imprint, and online network. Each is
distinctive. Each is a critical site in this transitionary moment. All are
profoundly interconnected, in new as well as old ways.
We live in an era which seems to be dominated by the rationalisms of
science-technology and economics-commerce. These appear daily as enormously
powerful forces, driving us alternately to doom or salvation. They make their
domineering presence felt ever more heavily in places of learning and research,
and often at the expense of the humanities.
There is no science-technology, however, without the human. There is no
commerce-economics without the human. Not only are the humanities a third major
area of inquiry; the object of study of the humanities is integral to the other
two. The humanities interrogate the nature of the human and build a normative
agenda for the human, developing programs of action for the humane, the
humanistic, human rights, global humanity, the locally humanised ...
- Humanities-Science-Technology
Now is the time to broaden the agenda of techno-science once again. How
better than to redefine science and technology as ‘arts’?
The western roots of techno-science are the Greek concept of ‘techne’,
and its Latin equivalent ‘ars’. These roots tell of a narrowing of definition
in modern times, and of a particular kind. It is a narrowing which dehumanizes
techno-science, reducing it to programs of merely instrumental rationality.
More broadly, by contrast, ‘techne’ and ‘ars’ meant art, craft and science, a
kind of practical wisdom involving both doing (application of technique, using
tools) and reasoning (understanding the principles underlying the material and
natural world). These ‘arts’ are the stuff of human artifice, and the result is
always an aesthetic (those other ‘arts’) and human value-drenched, as well as
instrumental. Such is an artfulness that can only be human, in the fullness of
our species being.
Indeed, our times may well demand such a redefinition. The new
technologies and sciences of informatics, for instance, are infused to a
remarkable degree with the human of the humanities: the human-centered designs
which aim at ‘usability’; the visual aesthetics of screen designs; the language
games of search and tag; the naming protocols and ontologies of the semantic
web; the information architectures of new media representations; the
accessibility and manipulability of information mashups that make our human
intelligence irreducibly collective; and the literariness of the code that
drives all these things. So too, new biomedical technologies and sciences
uniquely inveigle the human—when considering, for instance, the ethics of
bioscience and biotechnology, or the sustainability of the human presence in
natural environments.
- Humanities-Economy-Commerce
Today more than ever, questions of the human arise in the domain of the
econo-production, and these profoundly imbricate human interests, needs and
purposes.
Returning to roots again, the Greek ‘oikonomi’ or the Latin ‘oeconomia’
integrate the human in ways now all-too-easily lost to the more narrowly
understood contemporary understandings of econo-production. In the modern
world, ‘economy’ and ‘production’ have come to refer to action and reflection
pertaining to the domains of paid work, the production of goods and services,
and their distribution and market exchange. At their etymological source,
however, we find a broader realm of action—the realm of material sustenance, of
domesticity (the Greek ‘oikos’/household and ‘nemein’/manage), of work as the
collaborative project of meeting human needs, and of thrift (economizing), not
just as a way of watching bottom lines, but of conserving human effort and natural
resources.
Today more than ever, questions of the human arise in the domain of the
econo-production, and these profoundly imbricate human interests, needs and
purposes. Drawing on the insights of the humanities and a renewed sense of the
human, we might for instance be able to address today’s burning questions of
economic globalization and the possible meanings and consequences of the
‘knowledge economy.’
- The Humanities Themselves
And what of the humanities in themselves and for themselves?
To the world outside of education and academe, the humanities are
considered by their critics to be at best esoteric, at worst ephemeral. They
seem to have less practical ‘value’ than the domains of techno-science and
econo-production.
But what could be more practical, more directly relevant to our very
existence than disciplines which interrogate culture, place, time,
subjectivity, consciousness, meaning, representation and change? These
disciplines name themselves anthropology, archaeology, art, communication, arts,
cultural studies, geography, government, history, languages, linguistics,
literature, media studies, philosophy, politics, religion and sociology. This
is an ambitious program even before mention of the social sciences and the
professions of community service which can with equal justification be regarded
as closely related to the humanities, or even subjects of the humanities, more
broadly understood.
Within this highly generalized scope, the Humanities Conference, Journal
Collection, Book Imprint and News Weblog have two particular interests:
- Interdisciplinarity: The humanities is a domain of learning, reflection and action which require dialogue between and across discipline-defining epistemologies, perspectives and content areas.
- Globalism and Diversity: The humanities are to be considered a space where recognizes the dynamics of differences in human history, thought and experience, and negotiates the contemporary paradoxes of globalization. This serves as a corrective to earlier modes of humanities thinking, where one-sided attempts were made to refine a singular essence for an agenda of humanism.
The humanities come into their own in unsettling spaces like these.
These kinds of places require difficult dialogues, and here the humanities
shine. It is in discussions like these that we might be able to unburden
ourselves of restrictively narrow knowledge systems of techno-science and
econo-production.
The conversations at the conference and the publications in the
journals, book series and online network range from the broad and speculative
to the microcosmic and empirical. Whatever their scope or perspective, the
over-riding concern is to redefine the human and mount a case for the
humanities. At a time when the dominant rationalisms are running a course that
seems at times draw humanity towards ends that are less than satisfactory, the
disciplines of the humanities reopen fundamental questions of the human—for
pragmatic as well as redemptory reasons.
Important Dates
We welcome the submission of proposals at any time of the year. All
proposals will be reviewed within two to four weeks of submission. The dates
below serve as a guideline for proposal submission based on our corresponding
registration deadlines.
Late Proposal Deadline: 1
June 2020
Regular Registration Deadline: 1
June 2020
Late Registration Deadline: 1
July 2020
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