[ecrea] International Conference Bestiarium. Human and Animal Representations

*CFP: Bestiarium. Human and Animal Representations*

International PhD Conference
Bestiarium. Human and Animal Representations
28-30 SEPTEMBER 2016
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA
Scuola di Dottorato in Studi Umanistici

*
*The PhD School of Humanities of the University of Verona is organising
the international transdisciplinary
Conference “Bestiarium. Human and Animal Representations” which will
take place
from the 28th to the 30th September 2016.
 From Aristotle’s philosophy to the Medieval Bestiaries, from the
ancient fables to the works of
artists such as Damien Hirst, Joseph Beuys and Bill Viola, through
George Orwell’s Animal Farm
and Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka, the animal and its various
representations have always
played a lead role in the cultural production of human kind. For
example, from the XVI century
onwards Aesop’s fables and the oriental tales collected in Panchatantra
and in its Arab version
Kalila e Dimna have influenced a number of essays and short stories,
such as those by Agnolo
Firenzuola (La prima veste dei discorsi degli animali), Anton Francesco
Doni and Jean de la
Fontaine.
In the last decades, however, new achievements in fields such as Ecology
and Cognitive Ethology
have created the social need to deeply reconsider the ethical status of
animals. From a theoretical
point of view, these peculiar social demands have imposed an
interpretative shift in the Humanities,
leading to the so-called “Animal Turn” in cultural studies (Harriet
Ritvo, “On the Animal Turn”,
2007). This theoretical turn raised some fundamental questions about
human-animal relationships,
otherness, the ontological status of animals and the meaning of humanity
and animality. As a result,
the traditional epistemological categories of Humanities have been
called into question. Indeed, if
on the one hand the contribution of scholars such as Jacques Derrida
(L’Animal que donc je suis,
2006), Giorgio Agamben (L’Aperto: l’uomo e l’animale, 2002), Cora
Diamond (The Realistic
Spirit, 1991), and J. M. Coetzee (The lives of Animals, 1999) has
allowed to dismiss the conception,
typical of the Enlightenment, according to which “animals were mere
blank pages onto which
human wrote meaning” (Erica Fudge, “The History of Animals”, 2009), on
the other hand, it has
demonstrated a substantial inability to abandon the anthropocentric
point of view which has always
characterized the discourse on animals.
Hence the need to overcome the traditional tendency to read the animal
merely as a symbol, a
metaphor or an allegory, whose only purpose is that of representing and
negotiating human power
relations of race, class, and gender. This new perspective allows the
adoption of a critical attitude
capable of shortening the ontological distance between the human and the
animal, referring to a
phenomenological dimension in which the two elements are different, but
equally possible, modes
of corporeality of a particular form of animality.
The international trans-disciplinary Conference “Bestiarium. Human and
Animal Representations”
intends to give a contribution to this debate by focusing on texts and
discursive practices which
reveal the epistemological and cultural dynamics structuring the
representation of the animal.
The human-animal relationship has always been characterised by a wide
net of interactions and
exchanges. The aim of the Conference will be to rethink the very nature
of humanity through
animality – considering all the various meanings that this term can
acquire – in order to highlight
diversity and to find a new sense of the human and of the animal.
What are the ontological, phenomenological and ethical differences
emerging from the comparison
of the human with the animal? How does the distinction between humanity
and animality change
over time and in different cultural contexts? How can we rethink the
categories of otherness,
agency, embodiment and experience in the human-animal relationship? How
are the mechanisms of
empathy triggered through the textual representation of the animal? How
does the interpretation of
a text change when assuming a non-anthropocentric point of view on the
representation of the
animal? Which linguistics strategies are deployed when speaking of
animals and what do they
reveal?
Given the strong interdisciplinary character of the reflection on the
animal and its representation,
the Conference is open to scholars of different disciplines such as
Italian, ancient Greek, Latin, and
foreign literatures and philology, philosophy, linguistics, history and
anthropology, art, cinema and
new media.
We invite contributions which study, discuss and promote, among others,
the following issues:
– Human-animal relationship
– Animalising the human and humanising the animal
– Animal bodies and human bodies
– Discursive significance of animal metaphors, symbols and tropes
– Textual animals
– Animal societies and Human societies
– Animals and visual culture
– Language and animality
The Conference is addressed to PhD students and researchers who have no
more than 5 years post-
Doctoral experience.
The time limit for each presentation is 20 minutes, followed by
discussion. Please submit an
abstract of 300 words (title included) in .pdf format by April 15, 2016
to the following address:
(convegno.animali /at/ ateneo.univr.it) <mailto:(convegno.animali /at/ ateneo.univr.it)>
All submissions should be written in English or Italian, and be prepared
for anonymous review.
Name, affiliation, and research field should appear only in the text of
the e-mail. All submissions
will be acknowledged and acceptance of abstracts will be communicated by
June 15, 2016.
Contributions in English will be preferred.
The publication of the Conference proceedings is expected.
Organising Committee: Mariaelisa Dimino, Alessia Polatti, Roberta Zanoni.
Scientific Commitee: Giulia Anzanel, Stefano Bazzaco, Francesca Dainese,
Francesco Dall’Olio,
Damiano De Pieri, Mariaelisa Dimino, Anja Meyer, Damiano Migliorini,
Silvia Panicieri, Giulia
Pellegrino, Alessia Polatti, Simone Pregnolato, Marco Robecchi, Giacomo
Scavello, Tania Triberio,
Roberta Zanoni.

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