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The graduate students in art history at University of Southern California invite submissions for their 15th annual symposium, “Art and the Mind: Neuroaesthetics, Phenomenology, and the Experience of Vision,” which will occur in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 19, 2012 (the Sunday before the commencement of the CAA conference). We are pleased to announce David Freedberg (Columbia) and Antonio Damasio (USC) as our distinguished keynote speakers.
Neuroaesthetics and Neuroarthistory are hotly debated terms, considered by some to be art history’s newest methodology. Others have turned to phenomenology to draw out the affective power of artworks. This conference proposes an understanding of the work of art primarily through the experience of vision and cognition, an endeavor that began with Michael Baxandall’s “Period Eye.” How does the viewer encounter the work? Does neuroscience alter aesthetic experience? Can "beauty" be quantified and measured? Can Kant’s universal principles of aesthetic experience be understood through neurobiology?
We welcome topics from all time periods and global regions. Papers may address the encounter with art, take up neuroaesthetics as a methodology, or historicize the confluence of science and aesthetics. Interested participants should submit a CV and 500 word abstract (for twenty minute presentations) to artandthemind@college.usc.edu by November 28, 2011. Successful applicants will be notified by December 12th.
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