4th Global Conference: Beauty

4th Global Conference: Beauty Saturday 20th September - Monday 22nd September 2014 Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom Call for Presentations Beauty links as well as divides us, supplying social connections and experience. But what exactly is beauty and why does it move us? "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 argue that common sense and experience reveal the reality and centrality of beauty in our lives, that beauty expresses a basic spiritual reality. Some philosophers claim that the qualities and meanings of beauty will remain a mystery, that it is an ineffable construction of nature, mind and culture. The interdisciplinary beauty 'project' will explore, assess, and map a number of core themes. These will include: 1. Understanding Beauty - Defining and theorising beauty - Beauty and the human mind - Power of beauty - History of beauty - Politics of beauty - Cultures of beauty - Religion and beauty - Beauty Myths 2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty - Pursuit of beauty - Expressions of beauty - Appearance of beauty - Making beauty - Documenting beauty - Emotion and beauty - Appropriating beauty - Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture - Glamour and seduction 3. Beauty and Nature - Beauty and the natural world - Beauty and the Sublime - Beauty and desire - Science and mathematics of beauty - Medical aspects of beauty 4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity - Beauty subcultures - Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc. - Beauty collectors - Beauty specialists - Beauty disciples - Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings, surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification 5. The Business of Beauty - Beauty and consumer culture - Beauty and cultural capital - Beauty professions and trades - Beauty cities - Beauty marketing and forecasting - Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants etc.) - Displays of beauty 6. Abuses of Beauty - Beauty and transgression - Beauty, ugliness, and the grotesque - Beauty and aging - Defiling and destroying the beautiful - Beauty, decay and death - Beauty, violence and horror Presentations, performances and papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups âАУ and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Beauty and The Digital Arts. What to Send: 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 21st March 2014. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords. E-mails should be entitled: Beauty4 Abstract Submission. Please Note: In this email please attach TWO versions of your abstract as follows: 1) One with title and body of abstract only (no identification of the authorâАФthis version will be for our blind peer review process). 2) The other with the following information about the author(s): affiliation, email, title of abstract, title and body of abstract 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: jfoltyn@nu.edu Rob Fisher: beau4@inter-disciplinary.net The conference is part of the 'Ethos' series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference. Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/beauty/call-for-papers/