CFP Emotions East and West – The Cultural History of Emotions in Pre-Modernity II

A new conference on the cultural history of emotions is now being
organized in Istanbul, Turkey. Developed jointly by historians at
Sabancı University (Istanbul), Bilkent University (Ankara), University
of Washington (Seattle) and the network for cultural history of
emotions in pre-modernity (CHEP) at Umeå University, Sweden, the
program will run over three days and include six invited keynote talks
and a full calendar of talks by established scholars, post-graduates
and advanced graduate students in the arts and humanities, in addition
to providing opportunities to sample life in one of the world’s most
fascinating cities.

The conference’s general theme is Emotions in East and West. So far
the history of emotions has been dominated by a western and European
perspective. Our aim is to organize a first conference on this theme
in Turkey which we hope will attract new scholars and students into
the field and bring researchers from east and west together for
discussions on how to develop comparative and multicultural analyses
in the future. We welcome contributions on all aspects of the cultural
history of emotions from as many disciplines and diverse approaches as
possible, including (but not limited to) history, the history of
ideas, art, literature, musicology, politics, philosophy, cultural
anthropology, religion, and gender studies. The conference will
continue to explore the broad themes of the Umeå gathering: for
example, emotions as a historical concept, emotions in religious and
political contexts, visual representations of emotions and emotional
gestures, the language of emotions and its literary manifestations,
music and emotions, the gendering of emotions, sensibility,
sentimentalism, love, melancholy, and despair. In addition we will
especially welcome papers dealing with inter-cultural representations
of emotions (Easterners and Westerners representing each other’s
emotions), emotions and cultural identities, multi-cultural and
comparative perspectives.


The organizing committee is inviting submissions of one-page abstracts
of papers to be summarized as 20 minute talks at the Istanbul
conference. The papers should, in general, treat the topic of the
history of emotions in the pre-modern period. For the Umeå workshop
the “pre-modern period” was presumed to end at the turn of the 18th
century, which is acceptable from a strictly western perspective but
questionable when the focus of the conference broadens to take in the
East, where the nature of “modernity” and the broad moment of its
inception are contentious issues. Accordingly, papers dealing with
non-western emotions in the 18th century (and even later) will be
considered when a compelling argument is made for the “pre-modernity”
of the emotional context. The language of the conference is English.
Please send one-page abstracts before Dec. 01 2010, to:
chep2011@bilkent.edu.tr

Conference Organizers:

Walter G. Andrews, University of Washington (Seattle)

Tulay Artan, Sabanci University ( Istanbul)

Mehmet Kalpakli, Bilkent University (Ankara)

Jonas Liliequist, Umeå University CHEP (network for the cultural
history of emotions in pre-modernity)

Mohammad Fazlhashemi, Umeå University CHEP

For downloading and more information http://www.chep2011.bilkent.edu.tr/