Supported by the 糖心视频

Organizers:

Louise Braddock (Independent Psychoanalytic Thought network), Elisa Galgut (University of Cape Town), Niall Gildea (Edge Hill University), Derek Matravers (Open University).

The organizers invite expressions of interest for short papers to be given a two-day symposium to be held at St John鈥檚 College, Oxford, on July 14-15 2026. Applications to give a short paper responding to the workshop theme are invited from within and outside the academy. Structured around small interdisciplinary panels and emphasising conversation across the disciplines, the meeting is intended to explore the relation between art, including literature, and psychoanalysis with reference, though not exclusively so, to Wollheim鈥檚 work.

Deadline for Abstracts: 31 March 2026

Speakers include:

International: Elisa Galgut (philosophy, Cape Town), Louise Gyler (Australian Psychoanalytical Society, Sydney), Anna-Lisa Sander (doctoral student in philosophy, Heidelberg).

UK-based: David Collins (philosophy, Cambridge), Charlie Gere (media, film and culture, Lancaster), Derek Matravers (philosophy, Open University).

Theme:

It is well known, if not particularly well understood, that core notions in Wollheim鈥檚 philosophy of art depend on his commitment to the psychoanalytic model of the mind owed to Freud and developed by Klein. Many themes and ideas link Wollheim鈥檚 philosophy of art and psychoanalytic thought, in particular complex projection which both underpins his account of expression and plays a role in his account of the creation of, and understanding of, painting. Also prominent are conceptions of affect and drive drawn from Freud, and phantasy and subject-object relations in Kleinian theory. Most broadly, art for Wollheim could be said to be the link between corporeality and aesthetic experience; the 鈥榲oice鈥� of the unconscious.

Hence the body is central, both to Wollheim鈥檚 psychoanalytic philosophy of mind and to his philosophy of art. Predominantly, the flow of his ideas has been from psychoanalysis into the philosophy of art, where their influence is largely recognized and integrated into the canon. But while philosophical understanding of art has benefited from Wollheim鈥檚 understanding of the mind, gained from psychoanalysis, equally his understanding of the mind was formed by his understanding of art. The colloquium will open up this line of enquiry onto the less-explored flow of ideas from art to the psychoanalytic picture of the mind.  

The symposium is organised as part of the Richard Wollheim Centenary Project, a programme of the Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Thought network. It receives support from St John鈥檚 College, the 糖心视频, and the .

Attendance will be in-room only. The organizers hope to subsidize reasonable costs for accommodation and/or travel; please feel free to contact us to discuss this.

Please email your title and abstract (maximum 300 words), and title, for a 20-minute paper to: wollheimcentenary@gmail.com with 鈥榃ollheim Symposium 2026鈥� in the subject line, by 31 March 2026. All submissions will be evaluated on merit only; please ensure your text is anonymised.

Website:听

The Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Croatia hosts a large number of conferences in a wide variety of disciplines each year, bringing together scholars from Europe, North America, and further afield. In April 2026, the organisers shall be holding the twelfth in vivo Dubrovnik Conference on the Philosophy of Art. The dates for the 2026 meetings are 13^th to 17^th April, and the conference directors are David Collins (Cambridge), David Davies (McGill), Jason Gaiger (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford), Bozidar Kante (Maribor), Anna Pakes (Roehampton), and Iris Vidmar (Rijeka). The organisers welcome proposals for presentations ranging across the full range of issues in the philosophy of art and aesthetics. On the middle day of the conference (15^th April), there will be presentations on a selected theme with invited participants.

The conference runs along similar lines to the Dubrovnik Philosophy of Science Conference also held in April each year. This means that the organisers shall not be asking those wishing to attend for copies of their papers in advance, but they do ask for a title and a brief abstract by March 13^th at the latest, and earlier if possible. They鈥檒l notify all those who provide abstracts and titles as to whether their proposals have been accepted within a couple of days of that deadline, and earlier in the case of submissions received before the deadline. They can also provide, if requested, formal letters of invitation for those whose submissions have been accepted 鈥� these may be helpful in obtaining funding from institutions or granting agencies. A draft of the programme will be circulated to participants in the weeks prior to the conference, allowing for adjustments to be made if necessary to accommodate the schedules of those arriving late or departing early. There will be five or six sessions each day, with a lengthy lunch break (up to 3 hours) to allow participants to continue their discussions at a restaurant or other place of hostelry in the Old Town, or to explore the city. Presentations in regular sessions should be no longer than 40 minutes, allowing 20 minutes for discussion. Graduate students and those wishing to present shorter papers can give 20 minute presentations, with ten minutes for discussion, with two such events taking up a single one-hour slot in the programme.

The organisers are unfortunately not able to pay any expenses for participants, but hope this will not prove too much of a discouragement. Participants should be able to obtain reasonable accommodation at hotels frequented by other participants at IUC conferences 鈥� details can be provided to those interested. Apartment accommodation听in the Old Town is also available at a very reasonable cost. There will be a small conference fee (around 85 Euros, they will try to cover this for students) in order to cover their obligations to the IUC for the use of the conference centre.

If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send a title and a brief abstract to David Davies at david.davies@mcgill.ca by March 13^th 2026 at the latest. For further information, or if you are interested in attending, but not presenting at, the conference, please also contact David Davies at the same e-address.

For updates, you can also follow on:

Bluesky – @dbphilart.bsky.social
LinkedIn – 听

Concrete objects such as tables, chairs, hammers, or screwdrivers are usually cast as paradigm artifacts. More recently, the philosophy of technology has paid attention also to abstract artifacts such as algorithms or recipes. Yet, little philosophical attention has been paid so far to another interesting kind of artifacts, namely, artefactual events, which differ from both paradigmatic concrete artifacts and abstract artifacts in virtue of their distinctive temporal profile. An interesting species of the artifactual event is the mental artifact, which also has a temporal profile but unfolds in a sort of inner 鈥淐artesian theater鈥�, as it were, instead of in the public space. Hallucinations, dreams and psychedelic experiences arguably are mental artifacts of this sort.

This conference aims to investigate the philosophy of artifactual events, including mental artifacts, both from a metaphysical perspective and from an aesthetic perspective. The focus is not only on how to properly theorize the nature of artifactual events but also on how to account for our experience and appreciation of them. In this sense, the conference encourages submissions on general metaphysical issues about the nature of artifactual events and the specificity of mental artifacts, as well as on aesthetically relevant topics as for example performative arts like theater and dance or artworld events like happenings and festivals, but also鈥攄rawing on the growing field  of the aesthetics of consciousness鈥攖he appreciation of non-paradigmatic aesthetic entities such as dreams, psychedelic experiences and other inner products of the mind.

Research questions for papers may include but are not limited to:

• What are the metaphysical specificities of artifactual events as opposed to paradigm artifacts?
• Are artifactual events better cast as artifacts or as social entities?
• What are the aesthetic specificities of artifactual events as opposed to paradigm works of art?
• Artifactual events and the arts of time
• Performances as artifactual events in theater, dance, music and contemporary art
• Artifactual events and the artworld: the philosophy of festivals, exhibitions and conferences
• Can there be mental artifacts? In case, are they artifactual events?
• Are actions artifactual events? Are they mental artifacts as well?
• Are dreams and hallucinations mental artifacts?
• Do psychedelic experiences involve the creation of mental artifacts?
• If the predictive processing approach is right in casting conscious experience as 鈥渃ontrolled hallucination鈥�, should we cast the whole experience as a mental artifact?
• Can mental artifacts be objects of aesthetic appreciation?
• Can the study of mental artifacts contribute to the rising field of the aesthetics of consciousness?

Invited speakers:

Michael Y. Bennett (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)

Gwen Bradford (University of Toronto)

David Davies (McGill University)

Simon Evnine (University of Miami)

Uriah Kriegel (Rice University)

Aidan Lyon (Leiden University)

Anna Pakes (University of Roehampton)

Giuliano Torrengo (University of Milan)

Call for Abstracts

Please submit proposals by writing to:听pea@unige.it Submissions should be done as PDF files prepared for blind review. Please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references excluded) together with a title and 3 keywords.

The deadline for receipt is August 24, 2025. Speakers will be notified of decisions by September 7, 2025.听

There will be no conference fees. It will be possible to apply for bursaries.

The PEA Research Team has another conference planned for 10鈥�12 November on rule-constituted entities. For those who may be interested, here is the call for abstracts:

This conference is organized in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Neuch芒tel

In recent years, the notion of rules has garnered significant attention across several domains, including the ontology of art, social ontology, and the ontology of artifacts. Within social ontology, a foundational distinction has been drawn between constitutive rules鈥攚hich define or create the possibility of certain social phenomena鈥攁nd regulative rules, which govern behaviors within already established frameworks. This distinction has been instrumental in theorizing institutions, money, and other complex social constructs.

Rules have also played a central role in the study of games, from coordination games to video games, where they shape both the structure and experience of gameplay. More recently, discussions of rules have extended into the fields of aesthetics and the ontology of artifacts, particularly in relation to contemporary art. In such contexts, artists often sanction rules that constitute the artwork and guide how audiences are meant to engage with and interpret it. These rules, whether implicit or explicitly sanctioned by the artist, inform our aesthetic appreciation and are often integral to the identity of the work itself.

This conference seeks to explore entities that are described as rule-constituted across various domains: in the social realm (e.g., institutions: money, marriage, museums), in the artistic realm (e.g., conceptual and contemporary artworks), and in the technological realm (e.g., video games). Special attention will be given to the ways in which rules contribute to the constitution of artworks and influence our aesthetic engagement with them.

Research questions for papers may include but are not limited to:听

• What does it mean for an entity to be constituted by rules, and how does this differ across social institutions, artworks, and technological artifacts?
• What impact does rule change have on the identity of the entity it constitutes?
• What are games and how are they constituted by rules?
• How do artworks ontologically compare to games?
• How do artworks ontologically compare to institutions?
• Are there important philosophical differences between rules that constitute social institutions and those that constitute artifacts and artworks?
• What roles do rules play in social reality?
• How do rules exercise their power in the domain of art?
• Can museum policies be considered rules and how do they compare to rules sanctioned by artists?
• How do rules guide our appreciation of conceptual artworks?
• How do rules govern our appreciation and experience of games?

Invited speakers:听

• Catharine Abell (University of Oxford)
• Alexandre Declos (University of Neuch芒tel)
• Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani (University of Neuch芒tel)
• Francesco Guala (University of Milan)
• Sherri Irvin (University of Oklahoma)
• Olivier Massin (University of Neuch芒tel)
• Indrek Reiland (University of Vienna)

Call for Abstracts

Please submit proposals by writing to:鈥�pea@unige.it听 Submissions should be done as PDF files prepared for blind review.听Please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references excluded) together with a title and 3 keywords.听

The deadline for receipt is 24 August, 2025.听Speakers will be notified of decisions by 7 September, 2025.鈥�

There will be no conference fees. It will be possible to apply for bursaries. 

The PEA Research Team has another conference planned for 25-27 November on mental artifacts and artifactual events. For those who may be interested, here is the call for abstracts : .

The Association for Studies in Fiction and Fictionality / Soci茅t茅 Internationale des Recherches sur la Fiction et la Fictionnalit茅 invites submissions on the theme of Fiction and Lies, for the ASIFF/SIRFF Fourth International Congress.

10-12 June 2026
University of Edinburgh, UK

Supported by the 糖心视频 and the Scots Philosophical Association

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
-Professor Eileen John (Philosophy, University of Warwick)
-Professor Pierre Bayard (Literature, Universit茅 Paris 8 – Saint-Denis

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
From Plato鈥檚 indictment of the tragic poets as misrepresenting the truth, to Sir Philip Sidney鈥檚 famous claim in the Defence of Poesy that 鈥榯he Poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth鈥�, to current debates about fictionality and factuality, the relationship between听fiction听and听lies听has been a focus of scholarly attention. Both听fiction-makers and liars make things up and misrepresent the truth. But it is traditionally assumed that with听fiction, the invention is non-deceptive. As Margaret Macdonald (1954, 170) put the point, 鈥楾he conviction induced by a story is the result of a mutual conspiracy, freely entered into, between author and audience. A storyteller does not听lie, nor is a normal auditor deceived鈥�. Macdonald proposed that instead,听fiction-makers engage in a non-deceptive pretence of assertion (see also Searle 1975); but other approaches also distinguish between fictionality and deception, from philosophers who associate听fiction听with an invitation to make-believe rather than to believe to narratologists who treat fictionality as a rhetorical mode of communication that overtly signals fabrication. If听lies听are assertions aimed at deception, perhaps听fictions听are incapable of听lying.

Yet a sharp distinction between fictionality and deception confronts numerous challenges. Scholars across disciplines have considered the many ways in which听fictions听can affect our beliefs, for good or ill. Even if听fictions听cannot听lie听in some technical sense, they can certainly mislead, insinuate, obfuscate and so on. Works of听fiction听may be instances of propaganda which misrepresent the facts; think of Oliver Stone鈥檚 film JFK (1991) or Michael Crichton鈥檚听novel听State of Fear (2004). And the distinctions between the听fictional听and factual are under increasing pressure in the current culture of disinformation and 鈥榝ake news鈥� 鈥� a category not so easy to distinguish from 鈥榝ictional听news鈥�.

This three-day international conference aims to explore the relationship between听fiction听and听lies听from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, literary history and theory, narratology, film and media studies, psychology and cognitive science. Proposals may address听fiction听in general, or any historical period or cultural tradition. We also encourage studies of听fictional听works in a variety of media (including video games, comics, film, and television series).

POSSIBLE TOPICS include but are not limited to:
鈥� The possibility of听lying听in/through听fiction
鈥� Other modes of deception and dissimulation in听fiction听(in particular works, in different media, etc.)
鈥⑻鼺iction听and fictionality as (tools for) propaganda
鈥� The relationship between听fiction听and fake news
鈥� Differing historical or cultural conceptions of the relationship between听fiction听and听lies
鈥� Representations of deception within听fiction听(e.g., unreliable narrators,听lying听protagonists, forgers)
鈥⑻鼺ictions听that (seem to) deceive about their own status (e.g., mockumentary), and more generally, questions of 鈥榝raming鈥�

Please note: There may be a conference registration fee (discounted for students) depending on the outcome of grant funding applications.

SUBMISSION GUIDANCE
鈥� All submissions should be sent by attachment in Word or pdf to听fictionlies2026@gmail.com听by 15 December 2025.
鈥� Papers: Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words, in English or French. Bear in mind that sessions scheduled for paper presentations will be 30 minutes (20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes questions and answers).
鈥� Symposia: Proposals, in English or French, should be no longer than 500 words and should include a description of the topic/theme, the names/affiliations of participants and brief abstracts of the papers. Sessions for symposia will be 1.5 hours or 2 hours depending on the schedule and thus should typically have no more than three speakers.
鈥� We encourage submissions from, and symposia including, members of groups underrepresented in their disciplines, including women in philosophy. Symposia in philosophy should ensure that the proposal follows the Good Practice Policy of the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy (see听). Please also take note of the BPA鈥檚 Environment/Travel Guideline Scheme ().
鈥� Funding may be available towards the cost of arranging childcare for speakers who may require it. Please ask for details.
鈥� Participants in the conference will be expected to become members of the Association if they are not already ().

EARLY CAREER PRIZE
The ASIFF/SIRFF will offer a prize for the best paper by an early-career scholar (doctoral student or scholar who has received their PhD within the last 3 years), to be presented at the conference. The winner will receive a monetary award of 鈧�1,000 (euros). If you would like to be considered for this award, please submit your completed conference paper (no more than 3,500 words/20,000 characters) by 28 February 2026 to听fictionlies2026@gmail.com. The article must be unpublished.

The organisers invite scholars working in ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, moral philosophy and other philosophical areas, as well as those coming from cognitive sciences, literary studies, art criticism or art history, to join us at a conference dedicated to the exploration of the notion of attention and imagination and their relation to our moral experience. They are interested in exploring ways in which literature on the one hand, and philosophy on the other, depict attention and imagination and the role they play in our moral life, aesthetic encounters, emotional experiences, and other relevant domain of experience. Of particular interest to the organisers is exploring how attention and imagination feature in the work of philosophical classics, ranging from Kant and Collingwood to Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. The event’s plenary speakers are Katrien Schaubroeck (University of Antwerp), Serena Feloj听(University of Pavia) and Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (University of Pardubice).听

The organisers invite submissions for 30-minute presentations to be followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. Please send your title, along with a short abstract (max. 350 words), by July 15th 2025, to Iris Vidmar Jovanovi膰 (ividmar@ffri.uniri.hr). Notification of acceptance will be sent out by July 28th. There is no conference fee.

More details available at: 

Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2025

The BraIn Plasticity and Behavior Changes (BIP) research group at the Department of Psychology, University of Turin and the Giorgio Amendola Foundation are delighted to invite contributions for the Fourth International Conference on Beauty and Change, an international and interdisciplinary conference that will be held in Turin, Italy on 15-18 October 2025.

Established in 2022, the International Conference on Beauty and Change is a highly successful interdisciplinary forum for discussing recent advancements in philosophical and empirical aesthetics. This year鈥檚 conference will be devoted to the theme 鈥淎esthetic Experience and the Drive for Knowledge” and will gather leading scholars from the fields of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to reflect on how our engagement with the arts and our aesthetic experiences influence, interact with, or emerge from our drive to explore and understand the world.

Confirmed invited speakers:

J茅r么me Dokic (Institut Jean Nicod)
Jan R. Landwehr (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Winfried Menninghaus (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main)
Diana Omigie (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Francesco Poli (University of Cambridge)
Elisabeth Schellekens (Uppsala University)
Martin Skov (Copenhagen Business School; Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre)
Edward Vessel (City College of New York)

The Theme The intrinsic human tendency to seek knowledge and explore new information has attracted growing interest across the sciences and humanities in recent years. A broadening range of philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific theories are being developed to explain the origins of this 鈥渄rive for knowledge鈥� and capture its effects on crucial psychological phenomena such as learning, memory, attention, and motivation. At the same time, an expanding body of research is examining the 鈥渆pistemic emotions鈥� that accompany our behaviour as information-seekers (curiosity, interest, insight, wonder, surprise, confusion, boredom, etc.), shedding light on their phenomenology, their role in motivating behaviour, and their neural underpinnings. Together, these efforts are painting an increasingly rich picture of our lives as epistemic agents.

In parallel, a growing body of scholarship in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience is pointing to the idea that there might be a fundamental connection between aesthetic experiences and the drive to explore the environment and seek new information. According to many recent theories, in fact, aesthetic experiences are pleasurable precisely because they tap into and satisfy our needs as creatures animated by a drive for knowledge, and the arts are particularly effective means to meet that need. This perspective is opening new avenues of inquiry across disciplines. Philosophers are re-examining historical and contemporary debates on the relationship between the aesthetic and the epistemic, and on what art contributes to knowledge and understanding. Psychologists are refining models of how art and aesthetic experiences interact with and mobilize epistemic emotions and informationseeking behaviour. Neuroscientists, in turn, are uncovering how information-seeking activates reward circuitry in the brain, raising new questions about the nature of aesthetic pleasure and its relationship to other kinds of pleasure. These research efforts hold rich potential for advancing our understanding of both aesthetic experiences and epistemic practices.

The Fourth International Conference on Beauty and Change aims to explore these new lines of research systematically and in a thoroughly interdisciplinary way. It will gather philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and artists interested in both theoretical and empirical research to get a clearer picture of the many connections between our aesthetic experiences and our behaviour as epistemic agents. We therefore welcome well-informed theoretical or empirical contributions that might be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives on the relationships between aesthetic experiences and epistemic behaviour;
• Philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific debates about the epistemic benefits of engaging with the arts and how art may serve as a medium for knowledge or understanding;
• Insights into how the study of epistemic emotions (such as curiosity, interest, insight, fluency, surprise, confusion, and boredom) can shed light on our aesthetic experiences and vice versa;
• Strengths and limitations of existing theories and models linking aesthetic pleasure and knowledge acquisition (e.g. appraisal theories, processing fluency theories, learning theories, predictive processing theories, etc.);
• Theoretical and empirical contributions on the neural mechanisms connecting information-seeking with reward systems in the brain;
• Philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives on the role of epistemic emotions and exploratory behaviour in creativity and artistic production; 鈥� Cross-cultural perspectives on the relationships between aesthetic or creative experiences and epistemic behaviour;
• The influence of aesthetic considerations in epistemic practices and vice versa;
• Prospects and pitfalls of potential applications of the relationships between the aesthetic and the epistemic in education, communication, psychotherapy, and rehabilitation.

Submission Guidelines: The organisers accept two types of submissions: talks (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion) and posters. For both types of submission, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words in WORD or PDF format to beautyandchange@fondazioneamendola.it by 1 June 2025.

Abstracts must be written in English and prepared for blind review. In the body of your email, please indicate the names and affiliations of all the authors (specifying the presenting author), and your preferred presentation type (talk or poster). Each author may submit only one abstract as a presenting author but can be a co-author in any number of submissions.

The organisers especially encourage submissions from women, early career researchers and members of underrepresented groups, and will take diversity into account when making decisions for inclusion in the programme.

Important Dates Deadline for submissions:

1 June 2025 Notification of acceptance
15 June 2025 Conference dates
15 October 2025 (Satellite Workshop)
16-18 October 2025 (Conference)

Conference Costs

Conference fee for students (BA and MA): free Conference fee for untenured researchers (PhD students and postdocs): 鈧�100 Conference fee for tenured researchers: 鈧�200 Conference dinner (optional): 鈧�45

Student Prizes

Two small monetary prizes of 鈧�100 will be offered for the two best contributions by students (BA, MA, PhD). One of the two prizes will be awarded for a talk, the other for a poster. The prizes will be assigned by the conference scientific committee based on the quality and relevance of the submitted abstract. The two winners will be announced during the conference. If you would like to be considered for one of these prizes, please indicate so in the body of your submission email.

Satellite Workshop

This year, the conference will be preceded by a one-day satellite workshop on 鈥淭he Repeated Experience of Beauty鈥�. The workshop aims to explore the phenomenon of repeated aesthetic experiences, focusing on the paradoxical interplay between novelty and familiarity in aesthetic appreciation. It will feature talks by J茅r么me Dokic, Jan R. Landwehr, and Winfried Menninghaus among others. The workshop will take place on 15 October 2025 and will be open to all registered conference participants at no additional cost.

Scientific Committee Carola Barbero (University of Turin)
Alessandro Bertinetto (University of Turin)
Elvira Brattico (Aarhus University & University of Bari Aldo Moro)
Fabrizio Calzavarini (University of Turin)
Maura Crepaldi (University of Bergamo)
Alice Cancer (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan)
Filippo Contesi (University of Cagliari)
Jacopo Frascaroli (University of Turin)
Irene Ronga (University of Turin)
Maria Luisa Rusconi (University of Bergamo)
Pietro Sarasso (University of Turin)
Sander Van de Cruys (University of Antwerp)

Other Information Information about venue, travel and accommodation is available on the conference website.

The organisers aim to make the conference as accessible as possible. Please do not hesitate to contact the conference organisers to discuss accessibility requirements.

All questions and correspondence should be addressed to the Organising Committee at: beautyandchange@fondazioneamendola.it

The Departments of Philosophy at Auburn University and the University of Warwick, with support from the 糖心视频 and Warwick鈥檚 Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts, will hold a 2-day workshop to consider the nature and importance of aesthetic community. Some of the questions to be explored at the workshop are:

What is needed to sustain a community of taste? Is agreement in taste required? Is taste the right conceptual focus, with respect to aesthetic community? What is the potential for diversity within aesthetic community? Is the notion of a universal community of taste an ill-conceived aspiration or is it important as a regulative ideal? Broadly, what is good, problematic, or unclear in appeals to aesthetic community?

The organisers invite abstracts for papers that will explore the notion of aesthetic community, via some of the workshop鈥檚 central questions or related ones.

The abstracts should be 500-1000 words in length, with a 30-minute presentation in view. Please submit two versions of your file, one fully anonymized (and identified as such in the file name) and one including your name and information about your academic affiliation and career stage. Send abstracts to resourceaesthcomm@warwick.ac.uk by Monday 10 March 2025. Decisions will be made by 7 April.

The organisers especially encourage submissions from PhD and early-career researchers, and welcome and encourage submissions from members of groups currently underrepresented in philosophy. Some speakers will participate as commentators; if your paper is not accepted for presentation, you may still be invited to speak as a commentator. We do not have funding to support attendance at the workshop, but PhD and ECR researchers whose papers are accepted will be urged to apply for听travel funding directly from the 糖心视频.

In the wake of global movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, questions around the inclusion of oppressed voices and whose body is 鈥榓llowed鈥� to perform what role听sit at the heart of the performing arts community (including poetry, theatre, music and dance). Whether in discussions about colour-blind casting in Hollywood or major opera houses deciding if canonical stage works that problematically depict marginalised people should still be performed, the cultural implications of giving voice to marginalised experiences and ideas through performance are more important now than ever. To date these issues have remained largely untouched by philosophy, yet philosophy can bring important and distinctive understanding to the debate through ethical and aesthetic analysis of performance and embodied voice: What happens when artists invoke other voices in their work, and how does this shape the work鈥檚 reception? What are the implications of performing someone else鈥檚 lived experience, such as a work that refer to another鈥檚 body?

Keynote speakers

• Jeanette Bicknell (Philosopher of Aesthetics, Toronto)
• Ann Cahill (Professor of Philosophy, Elon University) with Christine Hamel (actor, voice and text specialist, scholar and director, Boston University)
• David Davies (Professor of Philosophy, McGill University)
• Jenny Sealey (theatre director, actor and artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company)

Call for Abstracts

The organisers invite abstracts of 500-1000 words on the topic of Embodied Voices for a 20 minute presentation. They welcome presentations from both philosophers and practitioners of the performing arts that address the ethics and politics of voice and body in performance such as:

1. What do we mean by the 鈥榓uthentic voice/performance鈥�?
2. Are some works restricted to certain performers (in virtue of the contribution their body makes to the work)? Are there cases in which reperformance of a work by another causes harm?
3. Who ought to have ownership of a particular work? Whose permission is needed to re-perform a particular work?
4. To what extent do the performing arts contribute to moral and political education?
5. Does an audience have a responsibility to listen in a particular way, and what would this entail? Can an artist demand this?
6. How do bodies mean and how do audiences 鈥榬ead鈥� them? Can words and actions be disentangled from one鈥檚 voice and body (for instance, can another achieve the same meaning by imitating the gestures of another?) 

Abstracts should be sent to k.d.simecek@warwick.ac.uk by 10^th January 2025. Speakers will be notified of decisions by 31^st January 2025. There will be no conference fee.

Organisers: Toby Young (Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and Karen Simecek (University of Warwick)

A conference at the University of Genova, 27-28 January 2025

Although many classic treatments of literature throughout the history of philosophy view poems as the paradigmatic literary works, poetry seems to be quite neglected in contemporary philosophy of literature, especially if compared to fiction and narrative. This conference is intended as a contribution towards poetry鈥檚 philosophical resurgence. We welcome submissions from philosophers, literary scholars and poets on theoretical and aesthetic topics concerning poems. 

Research questions for papers may include but are not limited to:

• What defines poetry as an art form? How can it be differentiated from other literary forms? Is poetry really an art form or is it better categorized as a genre? 
• What kind of objects are poems? Should they be identified as abstract objects, or rather as concrete tokens such as inscriptions or performances? 
• What is the role of sound in poetry? What is the relationship between poetry and music? 
• What is the importance of performance in poetry? Can poetry be properly appreciated by reading it silently? 
• What is the role of graphic form in poetry? What is the relationship between poetry and drawing? 
• What is the status of experiments like concrete poetry and visual poetry? 
• How can the experience that poems are meant to generate be characterized? Is there an experiential profile that all poems mandate? 
• What is the role of mental imagery in the experience and interpretation of poetry? 
• Do perceptual and cognitive phenomenology interact in the experience of poetry? If they do, how can we characterize their interaction? 
• Poetry comes in different forms: if poetry is the genus, what are its different species? What could a taxonomy of poetry look like? 
• Lyric poetry is often written in the first person: how does this peculiar perspective affect one鈥檚 engagement with poems?
• Does poetry have epistemic import? Is there a specific type of knowledge that poetry conveys? Does poetry elicit particular cognitive processes? Is poetry a suitable linguistic form for philosophy? 
• Can the meaning of poems be paraphrased? If not, is the meaning of poems ineffable? 
• Can poetry be translated without loss of content? Can poetry be properly assessed in translation?
• What is the relationship between meaning and form in poetry? Are meaning and form inseparable? Do we find the same relationship anywhere else in ordinary language? 
• Can philosophy of language account for poetic meaning? What is the semantics of poetry? What is the pragmatics of poetry? Does poetry exhibit sui generis semantic or pragmatic mechanisms? 
• Can an AI program write a poem? What is the role of large language models in poetry?

Invited Speakers:

Marcello Frixione (University of Genoa)
Eileen John (University of Warwick)
Hannah H. Kim (University of Arizona)
Anna Christina Soy Ribeiro (Texas Tech University)

Call for Abstracts:

Please submit proposals by writing to: pea@unige.it Submissions should be done as PDF files prepared for blind review. Please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references excluded) together with a title and 3 keywords.

The deadline for receipt is November 20, 2024. Speakers will be notified of decisions by December 3, 2024.

There will be no conference fees. It will be possible to apply for bursaries.