FinnishAcademy Research Project Styles of Mimesis solicits submissions for the conference “Mimesis, Ethics and Style” hosted by the Departmentof Finnish Language and Literature, University of Helsinki, Finland.
The conference aims to bring together theinterconnected though often separately studied questions of style and mimesisand open up a new kind of discussion not only on the relationship between styleand representation but also on the ways literary texts engage ethics andideology. It explores the ways in which literature produces its peculiarreality effects and negotiates its relationship to value systems connecting itto the world of everyday experience and ethics, as well as to differentideologies, emotions, world views and fields of knowledge. By invitingre-readings of the classical conceptions of mimesis as imitation and copying,we hope to bring new insights to the concept of intertextuality as well as tothe idea of style imitations.
The keynote speakers for the conference:
RobertDoran is Assistant Professor of French andComparative Literature at the University of Rochester, and the author of anumber of recent articles on Auerbach, mimesis and literary history. He iscurrently working towards a volume titled The Sublime: Cultural Aestheticsfrom Longinus to Nietzsche. Heis also the editor of Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature andCriticism, 1953-2005 (2008), acollection which brings together twenty of René Girard's uncollectedessays on literature and literary theory.
StephenHalliwell is Professor of Greek at the Universityof St Andrews. His research interests cover a wide area of the history andcriticism of ancient Greek literature and the Classical Tradition, includingattitudes to laughter, the theory of tragedy and Greek theatre practice. In2002 he published The Aesthetics ofMimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, and his current project is abook entitled Between Ecstasy and Truth: Values and Problems in GreekConceptions of Poetry.
Professor Jonathan Hart is the Director of the Comparative Literature Programat the University of Alberta. His research interests include cultural historyand comparative Canadian and American studies, as well as the visualrepresentations of the New World. Professor Hart is the editor of The Canadian Review of ComparativeLiterature, and his most recent publications are Interpreting Cultures: Literature, Religion and the Human Sciences(2006) and Comparing Empires:European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansion to the Spanish-American War (2008).
Professor Patricia Waugh from the Department ofEnglish Studies at the University of Durham has published widely on the relationshipbetween literature, philosophy and science, and is theco-organiser of the 2008-2009 Institute of Advanced Study workshop series on ‘Thinkingwith Feeling' on literature, philosophy and the cognitive sciences. The thirdedition of her seminal Metafiction: TheTheory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction will be published byRoutledge in 2009, and her new volume TheTwo Cultures: Literature, Science and the Good Society is forthcoming in2010.
We invite Professors, Scholars and Doctoral Students tosend proposals for original twenty-minute papersdiscussing the various aspects of:
- Concepts of Mimesis
- Ethics of Representation
- Mimesis, Knowledge and Cognition
- Mimesis as Style (Intertextuality, Parody, Pastiche)
- Reality Effect and Concepts of Literary Realism
- Mimesis and Allegory
Comparative and interdisciplinaryapproaches are very welcome. Audiovisual equipment will be available in theconference rooms.
Please e-mail proposals for papers (max.500 words) with a short CV or a biographical summary to the following address: mimesisconference@gmail.com by January31st, 2010.
For further information on our researchproject, you are most welcome to visit Styles of Mimesis website http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/mimesis/index_eng.htm.The conference is organised in cooperation with the Finnish Graduate School ofLiterary Studies.
Theorganising committee:
Professor PirjoLyytikäinen (Project Director)
Dr RiikkaRossi (Conference Chair)
Dr MinnaMaijala (Graduate School Coordinator)
Dr Saija Isomaa
Assistant Professor SariKivistö
Sanna Nyqvist, MA
Dr Merja Polvinen