[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: "Forms of Life in the Eighteenth Century": the annual Bloomington 18th-Century Workshop at Indiana University (deadline 1/8/2010)

[Gonul Pultar]

From: VOLTAIRE <voltaire at indiana.edu>


Call for Papers: Forms of Life in the Eighteenth Century

The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University is
pleased to announce the ninth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop,
to be held on May 12-14 2010. The workshop is part of a series of
annual interdisciplinary events that has been running since 2002, with
12-15 scholars presenting and discussing papers on a broad topic in a
congenial setting.

Our topic for 2010 is "The Forms of Life."  We'd like to consider the
implications of the 18th-century debate about the nature of life and
the turn to vitalist proposals of an animating force, broadening
beyond the discourses of physiology and the natural sciences, where
many of these ideas originate, to consider their connections elsewhere
in the period.  Why does the idea of a life force emerge (or
re-emerge) at this moment?  How are living forms distinguished from
each other?  What sorts of decisions create the hierarchies of animate
forms (and, for instance, what gets called "animal")?  Which lives
matter and which don't?  How might we reconsider eighteenth-century
answers to these questions in light of twenty-first-century rethinking
of life and animality?  How is the line drawn distinguishing the
living and the non-living, animate being and thing?  Participants
might also consider the implications of contemporary thinking about
life for the discourse of political economy, in its treatment of
populations, masses, collective life and the role of hunger in history
and also for developments in the religious sphere.  One might also
turn to the numerous Pygmalionic fantasies of animation in art and
criticism, from "tableaux vivants," illuminated statuary, life-like
automata and still lives to critical pronouncements on the living body
as the highest achievement of true art.

Papers might address topics such as:

           --organisms and organization, self-organization
           --animals and animation
           --the life sciences and the social sciences
           --the culture of sensibility and irritative physiology
           --monstrosity
           --aesthetic and living form
           --the "life" of the imagination
           --competing notions of life

 The workshop format will consist of focused discussion of four to six
papers a day, amid socializing and refreshment. The workshop will draw
both on the wide community of eighteenth-century scholars and on those
working in this field at Indiana University-Bloomington. The workshop
will cover most expenses of those scholars chosen to present their
work: accommodations, travel (up to a certain limit), and most meals.

We are asking for applications to be sent to us by Friday, January 8,
2010. The application consists of a two-page description of the
proposed paper as well as a current brief CV (no longer than three
pages).

Please email or send your application to:
Dr. Barbara Truesdell
Weatherly Hall North, room 122
Bloomington, IN 47405

Papers will be selected by an interdisciplinary committee. All
submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail within a fortnight: if you
have not received an acknowledgment by Jan. 22, 2010, please contact
Barbara Truesdell or Dror Wahrman.

Further information can be found on our website,
http://www.indiana.edu/~voltaire/, or you can Find us on
Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Center-for-Eighteenth-Century-Studies-at-Indiana-University/129787018885>.
For additional details and queries please contact the director of the
Center, Dror Wahrman, Dept. of History, Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN  47405
USA

e-mail: <dwahrman at indiana.edu>.


Barbara Truesdell
Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Indiana University Bloomington
<voltaire at indiana.edu>