This year's topic can be interpreted in a number of different ways: for example, as an application of aesthetic theory to various bodily-based activities, traditionally less aesthetically esteemed than notational music, written literature and the visual arts (i.e., as a generous invitation to handicrafts, folk dance and sports, precisely in their capacity as bodily-based practices, to join the aesthetic community of the fine arts); or, alternatively, as a reference to "the aesthetic" as it, from the very beginning, is practised, applied to and "of the" body (i.e., as a characterization of our pre-reflective engagement with the world as aesthetic, without granting the fine arts any privileged status).

The relation between human embodiment and aesthetics is the theme for this Fifth International Summer School in Applied Aesthetics, organized and sponsored by the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics. Participants are welcome to investigate the subject in relation to the following:

1. Philosophical aesthetics (What is the relation between aesthetics and the body in a historical perspective? How has it changed? What kind of re-evaluations of the philosophical tradition are called for? Which concepts need to be analysed and reactivated?)

2. A wider cultural context (Has our improved understanding of the role of the body in all our interactions with the world also enhanced the aesthetic aspect of these relations? What can we learn about embodied aesthetic experience when it is informed by or contrasted with non-aesthetic contexts, contemporary as well as historical: (a) scientific disciplines such as medicine, physiology, evolutionary biology, etiology and cognitive sciences; (b) politics, power structures, interest groups; and (c) embodied practices not ordinarily recognized as aesthetic such as sports and recreational activities, manual labour, meditation and religious practices?)

3. The creation and reception of art proper (What is the role of the body in psychological and artistic accounts of creativity? How does the body figure in the arts themselves? How can we disclose the body as thematic content in the different arts? How does our embodied interaction with the world itself present itself in relation to works of art?)

Embodied Aesthetics is open to a wide range of interpretations, and it will be the task of the Summer School to delineate in practice its pertinent boundaries.

The Summer School will be held at Sätra Brunn, a spa dating back to the year 1700, located in the vicinity of Uppsala, Sweden. Participants will be offered lodging in single rooms with full board at the reduced rate of $100 (795 SEK) per day. Applications and proposals for workshop presentations (max. 200 words) should be sent before May 31, 1999 to Staffan Bengtsson or Katarina Elam, Uppsala University, Department of Aesthetics, Slottet, Södra tornet, 752 37 Uppsala, Sweden.