Thursday 7 May 2015

Conference news: The Arts and Feeling in 19th-Century Literature and Culture, Birkbeck College, 16-18 July 2015


The Arts and Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Birkbeck College, University of London 16th – 18th July 2015


Keynote Speakers: Caroline Arscott, Tim Barringer, Meaghan Clarke, Kate Flint, Hilary Fraser, Michael Hatt, Lynda Nead, Jonah Siegel, Alison Smith

This conference will explore the ways in which nineteenth-century authors, artists, sculptors and musicians imagined and represented emotion and how writers and critics conceptualised the emotional aspects of aesthetic response. It aims to map the state of the field in this growing area of interest for nineteenth-century scholars by locating recent interdisciplinary work on sentimentality and art and writing and the senses within wider debates
about the relationship between psychology and aesthetics in the long-nineteenth century.

Speakers will investigate the physiology and psychology of aesthetic perception and the mind/body interactions at play in the experience of a wide range of arts. Key questions include: How did Victorian artists represent feeling and how were these feelings aestheticised? What rhetorical strategies did Victorian writers use to figure aesthetic response? What expressive codes and conventions were familiar to the Victorians? Which nineteenth-century scientific developments affected artistic production and what impact did these have on affective reactions? The conference includes a panel discussion on the topic of ‘Curating Feeling’ with speakers Michael Hatt, Lynda Nead and Alison Smith.

To register for the conference, please visit: https://www2.bbk.ac.uk/artsandfeeling

Places are limited.

Please address any questions to Dr. Victoria Mills at artsandfeeling@gmail.com

More information will be available soon at www.artsandfeeling.com