The program for the upcoming conference Emotion, Sense, Experience in British Art and Architecture, organized by Cigdem Talu (McGill University) and Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi (Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main) and sponsored by the North American Chapter on the History of Emotion has been announced.
The conference will be held online from 22-24 June 2023. Registration is open on Eventbrite here! If you have trouble accessing the Zoom link through Eventbrite for whatever reason, you can also use this link instead on the event days.
View the full conference program on the website here.
CONFERENCE THEME AND PROGRAM:
How can we revise the history of British art and architecture through the lens of the histories of emotions and senses? What can the history of British art and architecture add to our understanding of the histories of emotions and senses? The Emotion, Sense, Experience conference takes these questions as provocations and points of departure, specifically focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will showcase existing and ongoing research on the history of emotions, senses, and experiences in British art and architecture and assist cross- disciplinary correspondences while opening new and innovative possibilities for future scholarship.
Many historians of British art and architecture have embraced the promises of the history of emotions and senses in intersections with histories of childhood, medicine and health, religion, empire, race, and gender, while others have discussed how the histories of emotions and senses are like a continuation/development/sophistication of their work on experience. They agree that focusing on senses and emotions offers more nuanced discussions of why historical actors did what they did. It also provides a bridge between understanding structures and intentions and the individual (and collective) agency and experience of historical actors. It thus helps capture some complex – multivalent, changing, and unexpected – experiences of buildings that otherwise remain impossible to attend to. Nevertheless, their work rarely comes up in discussions on revising British art and architectural history. Thus, facilitating a platform for scholarly exchange and dialogue is long overdue.