3rd International Conference On emotions: history, politics, representations Athens, 18-20 May 2007 program The concept of ‘emotions’ has increasingly become topical on the agenda of academic research as well as in social and political endeavors during the last twenty years. Contemporary international crises, which have become frequent of late, bring out personal and collective forms of emotional manifestations – such as pain, fear, compassion, and affect – and reveal the degree in which these emotions are entangled with the political and social action of individual and collective agents, i.e. states, international organizations, humanitarian associations, etc. At the same time, the formation of individual and collective subjectivities through the manipulation of emotions, the role of emotions in the production of social hierarchies such as gender, class, race and the nation, as well as power relations among individuals, nations and even historiographies have increasingly become the object of historical study. The turn of historiography to the study of emotions in order to indicate historical continuities and discontinuities as well as the interpretation and understanding of procedures and transformations, such as the origin of the “culture of guilt” within medieval Christianity, or the rise of sentimental individuality during the seventeenth century, has opened new opportunities for the inspection of the past. Therefore the study of emotions and the examination of questions related to their production and use is pertinent and timely as these address issues relating not only to academic research but also to social and political action. In the framework of Western hegemonic hierarchical dichotomies (individual–social, public–private, rational–irrational) emotions have been stereotypically conceptualized as natural and/or psychic essences. Situated in a biologically and universally determined human nature, emotions were not recognized as a legitimate category of historical and socio-cultural analysis. Since the 1980s the interests of social and cultural studies have turned (especially under the influence of social anthropology) to the cultural and social production of emotions as well as to the relation of emotions to political procedures. This turn led to a prolific bibliographical production in historical studies, social anthropology and theory, as well as cultural studies. Scholarship on emotions was interconnected with a broader search for identity, subjectivity, alterity and agency. Later, criticism based on simplistic logocentric constructivist theories and the emergence of the theory of embodiment challenged dualistic dichotomies such as body–mind and reason–emotion. Furthermore, the development of a dialogue between social theory and psychoanalysis led to an investigation of the social in terms of the psychic and of the psychic in terms of the social. The conference seeks to explore the historicity, sociality, and cultural politics of emotions such as love, shame, fear, guilt, anger, sublimation, pride, vulnerability and sacrifice, passion, compassion and animosity. The discussions and explorations that this conference seeks to encourage draw on a wide range of fields namely: History, Social Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Media and Communication Studies. The conference focuses mainly – but not exclusively – on the following thematic domains: · the history and politics of emotions in the context of the national, religious, and other institutions and discourses, the nation-state and the mechanisms of social control, the practices of humanitarian governmental and non-governmental organizations · the uses of emotions as a narrative strategy in historical writing · the viewing and spectacularity of emotions as represented through the media · the emotional aspects of gender, class, and national identities and subjectivities in their multiple historical dimensions · emotions as strategies in the context of consumption and the market · emotions as artistic representations in the form of photography, painting, video-art, etc. · emotional collectivities, collective emotions; the emotional investment of public spaces · senses, emotions, and embodied subjectivities CALL FOR PAPERS We invite proposals for 15-minute individual papers or for 90-minute panels. If you are interested in presenting an individual paper, please send the title and a 500-word abstract to historein@historein.gr. If you are interested in organizing a panel, please send a 500-word summary of the proposed session as well as 500-word summaries of individual papers. Panel chairs are responsible for the funding of their proposed panel. The deadline for individual and panel proposals is 15 May 2006. The selection committee will notify the final speakers in due course. Return to top