3rd GLOBAL CONFERENCE
Sunday 15th September – Tuesday 17th September 2013
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
‘The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty,’ wrote the poet-playwright- novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty’s relevance, meanings, and the spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been challenged, called a search for Eldorado. Some find no beauty in life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty? Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory. Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty ‘project’ will explore, assess, and map a number of key core themes.
These will include:
1. Understanding Beauty
- Defining beauty
- Theorising beauty
- Power of beauty
- History of beauty
- Politics of beauty
- Culture of beauty
- Religion of beauty
- Beauty Myths
2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty
- Pursuit of beauty
- Expressions of beauty
- Appearance of beauty
- Making beauty
- Documenting beauty
- Emotion and beauty
- Beauty and seduction
- Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture
3. Beauty and Nature
-Beauty and the natural world
-Beauty and the Sublime
-Beauty and desire
-Science and mathematics of beauty
-Medical aspects of beauty
4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity
- Beauty subcultures
- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.
- Beauty collectors
- Beauty specialists
- Beauty disciples
- Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings, surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification
5. The Business of Beauty
- Beauty and consumer culture
- Beauty and cultural capital
- Beauty professions and trades
- Beauty cities
- Beauty marketing and forecasting
- Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants etc.)
- Fashion and beauty
- Glamour and beauty
6. Diminishing the Beautiful
- Beauty and transgression
- Beauty and ugliness
- Beauty and aging
- Defiling the beautiful
- Destroying the beautiful
- Beauty and death
- Beauty and decay
Presentations will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.
What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 22nd March 2013.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 22nd March 2013.
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