Categories
Conference

Launching the Atmospheric Humanities

The Fifth International Workshop on Science, Philosophy and Literature

Hermoupolis, Syros Island, Greece
14-16 July 2020

THIS WORKSHOP HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

The Atmospheric Humanities is a fast-emerging field of scholarship seeking to understand socio-cultural dimensions of atmospheric experience, knowledge and practice. Examining atmospheric agency in its historical and contemporary manifestations, atmospheric humanities explore the atmosphere as a site of diverse cultural appropriations of air’s modalities and their reproduction in practices of aerial and climatological citizenship. This foundational workshop aims to initiate and foster discussions on how atmospheric themes, memes, and objects emerge, spread and travel across artistic and academic communities. We especially welcome contributions from scholars whose work spans disciplines, including, but not limited to, literary and media studies, history of science, environmental history, aesthetics, visual arts, architecture, phenomenology, and social sciences.

Key themes:

  • The changing representation(s) of the atmosphere in art and popular media, both contemporary and historical.
  • Interfaces and interactions between scientific understanding(s) of the atmosphere and other ways of knowing or experiencing the atmosphere (e.g. political, indigenous, religious, philosophical, aesthetic).
  • Explorations of space and scale in relation to human understanding of the atmosphere and related concepts such as weather and climate.
  • The material culture of the atmosphere, including technologies used to measure, assess, represent and manipulate the atmosphere.

The workshop is organized by the International Commission of Science and Literature and the International Commission on History of Meteorology. The Commissions will provide a limited travel support to early career scholars, who should send their application letter, presentation abstract and CV to Dr Alexander Hall at a.f.hall@bham.ac.uk and George N. Vlahakis at gvlahakis@yahoo.com

Organizing committee: Vladimir Jankovic (University of Manchester), George N. Vlahakis (Hellenic Open University), Madalina Diaconu (University of Vienna), Alexander Hall (University of Birmingham), James R. Fleming (Colby College), John Holmes (University of Birmingham), and Kostas Tampakis (National Hellenic Research Foundation).

Please send your abstract before 20 FEBRUARY 2020 to Vladimir Jankovic at vladimir.jankovic@manchester.ac.uk and George Vlahakis at gvlahakis@yahoo.com

The workshop is supported by DHST/IUHPST, National Hellenic Research Foundation and the Hellenic Open University.