Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities - A BLENDED CONFERENCE

Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities - A conference organized by the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network and the Sorbonne Université, Paris, France Founded in 2003, the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network is brought together by a common interest in established traditions in the humanities while at the same time developing innovative practices and setting a renewed agenda for their future. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns (https://thehumanities.com/about/scope-concerns) and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions (https://thehumanities.com/about/themes). https://thehumanities.com/about -------- CALL FOR PAPERS https://thehumanities.com/2023-conference/call-for-papers Place: Online + Sorbonne Université, Paris, France Format: A mix of live, pre-recorded, and in person (at a scale that's allowed) presentations and social interaction spaces. Dates: 28-30 June 2023 Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities calls for research addressing the following conference themes and special focus: Special Focus – Literary Landscapes: Forms of Knowledge in the Humanities King Lear, and the whole of Romantic poetry, among numerous other references, have illustrated some of the fundamental meanings of literary landscapes. In these cases, landscapes represented the interiority of a character. But literary landscapes, in the common imagination, also represent a view of an extensive knowledge system. In these cases, for example, from the Bible to the Encyclopedia of D'Alembert, and Diderot, the "tree" has most often come to represent the hierarchy of knowledge and its link to a common origin of this knowledge system.   By the end of the 19th century, with the specialization of the sciences, the certainties of the hierarchy of knowledge – the singular tree – were called into question. Wilhelm Dilthey distinguished the fundamental differences between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). And in the very construction of his novel "Bouvard et Pécuchet", Gustave Flaubert shows the fragmentation and questions the confidence in the the truth of the sciences, whether human or natural. As the middle of the 20th century developed, through a structuralist revolution, the reflection on the nature of the human sciences returned to the notion of "humanities," where the human is at the center. And where the hierarchy of knowledge cannot be separated from a relationship to morality. In the 21st century, Deleuze, in contrast to the tree diagram, then develops the image of the rhizome to underline the absence of hierarchy in the relationships between the different fields of knowledge and the horizontality of its deployment.   Throughout this long history, new literary landscapes – as representation and reality – emerged to inform the imagination of the relationship of knowledge. And today, more recent critical orientations, such as ecocriticism, contribute new meanings to literary landscapes and emphasize the responsibility of the human being in the exploration of nature. These are some of the many rich aspects of the relationships between literary landscapes and representations of knowledge in the humanities. At this conference, we will explore these dynamics along several axes: - The Tree and the Rhizome  - Representations of Landscape as Knowledge  - Literary Cartographies of Knowledge  - Between Knowledge and Morality  - Literary Maps and Geo-critics  - Ecocriticism and the Humanities Dr. Bernard Franco, Faculté des lettres, Sorbonne Université, France Annual Conference Themes Theme One – CRITICAL CULTURAL STUDIES Theme Two – COMMUNICATIONS AND LINGUISTICS STUDIES Theme Three – LITERARY HUMANITIES Theme Four – CIVIC, POLITICAL, AND COMMUNITY STUDIES Theme Five – PAST AND PRESENT IN THE HUMANISTIC EDUCATION -------- A BLENDED FUTURE For over 30 years, Common Ground (https://cgscholar.com/home/about) has been invested in developing technologies that seek to break down barriers of access in scholarly communication. In each phase, we've built media platforms to support spaces for interdisciplinary dialogue, before such approaches were in vogue; connected international voices, when disciplines were too often isolated in national silos; and supported an agenda of access and equality, by offering pathways and opportunities for diverse voices. We now propose another kind of intervention - to build a scholarly communication infrastructure for a blended future (https://thehumanities.com/2023-conference/format). Our blended model seeks to transcend physical boundaries by offering a platform to extend in-person conference content online, while ensuring online-only delegates are afforded equal participatory and experiential spaces within the platform. At the same time, the model offers participants a legacy resource to which they can return in the Event application, with access to a social space in our Community application where fellow participants can keep connected long after the conference ends. Our blended conference experience is delivered on the CGScholar platform (https://cgscholar.com/) – developed by the Common Ground Media Lab (https://cgnetworks.org/medialab), the research and technology arm of Common Ground Research Networks. https://constructedenvironment.com/2023-conference -------- RELATED CONFERENCES We understand travel is difficult in the current climate. For this reason, we also offer related thematic events in our sister Research Networks that you might be able to attend in-person. This way we build for our Research Network Members flexible, and at the same time resilient, spaces for communication, engagement, and participation. View other Common Ground Research Networks conferences: https://cgnetworks.org/conferences/conference-calendar Enquiries: support@cgnetworks.org