Neuro Humanities Studies

The Brain, Ambiguity and Art – Meeting in Alicante

Ambiguity as a Characteristic of the Architecture of the Human Mind – Semir Zeki

Variability, and the choice that it entails, is the bread and butter of evolution. It is therefore not surprising to find that variability is built into ordinary perception and is also a fundamental characteristic of great works of art. The reason for this is simple; it provides for choice and is therefore in line with great evolutionary principles. In works of art – whether derived from visual art or musical art – ambiguity is key. In ordinary perception it may act as a safeguard, protecting the individual from unsafe decisions. In art, it allows for the multiple interpretations of the same stimulus or work. The neurobiological definition of ambiguity is quite precise and different from the usual dictionary definitions. The latter usually define ambiguity as “uncertainty” or “confusing” or “of doubtful meaning”. The neurobiological definition is the exact opposite: it is certainty but certainty that occupies the conscious stage momentarily, before ceding its place to another momentary certainty. Hence, in neurobiological terms, there is no correct answer to an ambiguous stimulus, because all answers are correct momentarily. This is so regardless of whether one is viewing simple “ambiguous” figures such as the “rabbit-duck” bi-stable figure, the metastable paintings of Dalí or the finished masterpieces of Vermeer, Caravaggio and Tiziano which, in spite of their “finished” status, allow of multiple interpretations, none of which is the correct one because all are correct; it also applies to literary and musical works. I will give a more detailed description of the varieties of ambiguity and try to address, in outline, the question of how the conflict between them is resolved neurobiologically.

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To know more and to follow online please register here : https://platonicacademylondon.wordpress.com/events/

 

Master Executive NEUROSCIENCE and ART – Bologna

Would you like to acquire technical-scientific skills that enable you to take an innovative approach to projects in the field of art?

Would you like to know what Neuroaesthetics is all about and understand its importance in museum educational proposals and exhibition practices?

Here is the new edition of the Executive Master in NEUROSCIENCE and ART, starting on 14 January 2023 in Bologna.

What you will study:

  • The visual process by the brain and the areas of aesthetic processing
  • Emotional marketing and the construction of the memory of an event
  • Ethics and cognitive science
  • Neuroaesthetics and its applications
  • Museum education as interactivity on the territory
  • The didactics of art as therapy
  • Hybridisation practices between art and science

 

The lecturers in charge of the training course, from prestigious universities and important museums, will accompany you in the development of the project of your interest, with a final operational workshop.

Here more information about the course (in Italian)


Call for papers “The Digital Environmental Humanities. Towards Theory and Praxis”

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies
ISSN 1218-7364

All HJEAS’ archived issues are available on JSTOR, the largest, most available website for humanities journals, current issues are also accessible electronically on ProQuest, including the most recent indexed by the SCOPUS database, indexed and abstracted by the MLA International Bibliography. For more about the HJEAS go to: [https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/about].

Call for Papers
“The Digital Environmental Humanities. Towards Theory and Praxis”

Over the past years the rapid technological improvements, innovations and use of digital applications have transformed us into living and working in virtual environments. We are now facing ‘oceans’ of big data, inaugurating what has been called the “Digital Anthropocene.” Gaining momentum since around the 1950s, the Digital Humanities (previously referred to as Humanities Computing or Computing in the Humanities) “is a diverse and still emerging field that encompasses the practice of humanities research in and through information technology, and the exploration of how the humanities may evolve through their engagement with technology, media, and computational methods.”  As we move from the first wave of qualitative data to the second, which is apt to be more critical, interpretative and empirical with the use of toolkits and services (Presner, 2010), the rise of a third wave introduces entirely new interdisciplinary paradigms, convergent fields, new methodologies and concepts as well as new models and patterns while working on cultural texts.

Although the disciplines of Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities appear to work with different methodological approaches (Posthumus and Sinclair, 2016: 370), they can provide a shared space for exploring questions such as how nature could be in dialogue with a computer or how technology could help us to understand environmental issues. Both disciplines adopt common vocabulary such as “environment,” “system,” “network, “collectivism,” “individualism” while approaching texts. The Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities are “interdisciplinary and collaborative” disciplines (Cohen and LeMenager, 2016: 340) where “[n]ew tools, new metaphors, provide second-order feedback loops that inform the original metaphors of nature and ecology” (Morey, 2012: 119). Their collaborative work aims through new critical tools to shed light on the complex entanglements of nature with the digital sphere, and their relationship to each other when introduced into a system. A well-known concept across research is “digital ecologies” or “digital ecology or environment” (Wellmon, 2012: 77), which describes multiple reading and virtual environments, including their interactions made possible by the use of digital analysis tools while working on a text or database.
As Finne Arne Jørgensen notes, the “idea of nature is becoming very hard to separate from the digital tools and media we use to observe, interpret, and manage it” (2014, 109). This interweaving presents a challenge that we have to face while developing and applying digital tools, applications, portals, repositories, and curated interactive objects to expand the research of Digital Environmental Humanities.
In this journal issue, we will explore exactly how the disciplines of Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities can provide us with new perspectives and critical tools. In particular, considering mainly literary studies, philosophy studies, media studies, visual studies and Art, we will explore and discuss the different ways in which concepts such as digital ecologies, digital environments, networks and so forth are approached by these disciplines in both theory and praxis. The new approaches and concepts form a ‘digital turn’ in the humanities, expanding the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world, and the characteristics of such a relationship, under which conditions (hybrid, symbiotic, etc.) and for what purposes, for example, education. Furthermore, the Digital Environmental Humanities offer insights on “Citizen Humanities” in which the involvement of public space, citizens and academia assists the better understanding of the practical aspects of the relationship between the human and the more-than-human world.
We invite papers that consider the various interactions between Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities in order to open up new forms of inquiry for critical approaches to the Humanities. Areas of interest for this special journal issue include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

● Digital Environmental Humanities in Literary Theory (Ecocriticism, Algorithmic Literary Theory) and Comparative Literature
● Digital Geographies and Spatialities
● Digitalocene (e.g. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, etc.)
● Digital Tools, Digital Applications, Digital Repositories and Archives, Data Visualization in/for Environmental Humanities
● Digital Ecologies and Topics from the Continental Philosophy
● Digital Environmental Humanities and Posthumanism, Transhumanism, AI, and Ethics
● Digital Ecologies, Plant Studies, and Animal Studies
● Digital Ecologies, Aesthetics and Art
● Digital Ecologies in Media and Film Studies
● Digital Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice
● Digital Ecologies, Medical Humanities (e.g. Pandemics) and Biotechnology
● Digital Oil and Energy Humanities
● Digital Environmental Pedagogies and Storytelling
● Digital Ecologies in Citizen Humanities, Smart Cities and Citizenship Futures
● Biomimicry and Digital Modeling
● Towards the future of Digital Environmental Humanities as Discipline in Theory and Praxis

References
Cohen, Jerome Jeffrey, and Stephanie LeMenager. “Introduction. Assembling the Ecological Digital
Humanities”, PMLA 131.2 (2016): 340-346. doi: 10.1632/pmla.2016.131.2.340.
Jørgensen, Finne Arne. “The Armchair Traveler’s Guide to Digital Environmental Humanities”,
Environmental Humanities 4.1 (2014): 95-112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3614944.
Morey, Sean. “Digital Ecologies” in Dobrin, I. Sidney. (2012). (Ed.). Ecology, Writing Theory, and
New Media. Writing Ecology (New York and London: Routledge), 106-121.
Presner, Todd. (2010). “Digital Humanities 2.0: A Report on Knowledge” in Emerging Disciplines,
edited by Melissa Bailar (Houston: Rice University Press).
Sinclair, Stéfan and Stephanie Posthumus. (2016). “Digital? Environmental: Humanities” in The
Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann (London and New York: Routledge).
Wellmon, Chad. (2012). “Why Google Isn’t Making Us Stupid…or Smart”. ISAC. The Hedgehog
Review. Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 14:1
<https://lecture.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~cwpgally/references/2012W_RD_Google_essay.pdf>, [accessed 29/05/20222].

Editors 
Peggy Karpouzou, Assistant Professor in Theory of Literature, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
E-mail: pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr

Nikoleta Zampaki, PhD Candidate in Modern Greek Literature, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
E-mail: nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr

Submissions’ Guidelines and Deadlines

Deadline for sending an abstract (approx. 300 words and a short CV) to both Editors’e-mails pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr andnikzamp@phil.uoa.gr: 31 October 2022.

Deadline for sending the full papers to both Editors’ e-mails pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr: 30April 2023.

More about full papers’ and submissions’ guidelines may be found here: [https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/about/submissions].

Please direct any questions to both Editors’ e-mails:
pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr

Submission of a book proposal

Dear colleagues,

You are welcome to submit a book proposal for a publication of a monograph, handbook, edition/edited, collection, etc., to either Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures Series at Rowman & Littlefield and Environmental Humanities Book Series. Click on the series title to download more information!

Call for Papers: Journal of Ecohumanism

General Call for Papers
Journal of Ecohumanism invites contributors to submit their articles.
Submission Deadline: throughout a year
Journal of Ecohumanism aims to open up new possibilities in reconfiguring the multidimensional internship among humans and the more-than-human world by focusing on the structure, mechanics, functionalities, and representations of this internship manifested across ecohumanist and civil contexts. Since Environmental Humanities ample research has looked at variable aspects of ecological citizenship, we have to focus on globalization’s temporality in the rise of Citizen Humanities. In this sense, we are in the midst of constant transformations and evolutionary processes, contributing to the world defining, even perceiving new planetary narrations. In response, the Journal of Ecohumanism develops conversations to consider how challenging conditions shape the concept of citizenship as form, structure, identity, representation and insight, as well as how ecohumanism affects our civil experience of space and time.
Moreover, Journal of Ecohumanism features original research articles, discussion papers and book reviews in a great range of topics covered by critical ecohumanism and citizenship, including but not limited to works informed by cross-cultural and transnational approaches in their intersections with literary theory, cultural studies, cultural criticism, comparative literature, media studies, social studies, religious studies, medical humanities, continental philosophy, and environmental ethics. Τhe journal welcomes research in environmental humanities, ecopoetics,  ecofeminism, ecopsychology, eco-/bio-art, eco-linguistics, matters of Anthropocene or Capitalocene, symbiosis and the era of Symbiocene, citizen humanities and art, semiotics of space and place, urban ecology, smart cities, resilience and sustainability, biopolitics, bioterrorism, pandemic literature and art, posthumanism and related topics about eco-citizenship and the future of Humanities.
All the aforementioned disciplines and research fields change how we understand citizenship by interpreting and translating the complexities of the world that we live in alongside the interplays among humans and the more-than-human world. In conclusion, the Journal of Ecohumanism is open to contributions from around the globe by enriching and promoting the interdisciplinary dialogue between academics, practitioners, policymakers, and students working on different disciplines and encouraging the ecohumanist and citizen narratives in both theory and praxis.
Currently, submissions in English and French are considered. For all articles, an abstract in English is required. For submissions in French, another abstract in the original language is required.
The journal follows a strict double-blind review policy embedded in our general publishing ethics and supported by rigorous academic scrutiny of papers published. We invite papers, commentaries, discussion papers and book reviews investigating the ecohumanist and civil narratives in Environmental Humanities, Citizen Humanities, Literary Theory and Cultural Criticism, enabling short research accounts, debates, study cases, book reviews in this interdisciplinary field of Humanities. The Journal seeks to explore issues beyond the “ecocentric-anthropocentric” binary and to examine the changing status of subjectivity, agency, and citizenship today through the complex relations between nature and techno-culture while encouraging a philosophical rethinking of citizenship in a more-than-human world.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Ecocriticism and the Εcological Culture
Environmental Ethics
Ecofeminism
Ecopsychology
Ecopoetics
Eco-/Bio Art
Ecohumanism and Continental Philosophy
Ecohumanism and Posthumanism
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Postcolonial Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Animal Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Media Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Religious Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Disability Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Medical Humanities
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Gender Studies
Ecohumanism and Citizenship and/in Narrative Studies
Citizen Humanities
Citizen Art
Pandemic Literature
Pandemic Art
Semiotics of Space and Place
Urban ecology, Smart cities, Sustainability, Resilience
Bioethics
Biopolitics
Bioterrorism
Anthropocene or Capitalocene
Matters of Symbiosis and the era of Symbiocene
Eco-citizenship and the future of Humanities
All submissions should follow the latest guidelines of APA style referencing. You are welcome to submit full-length papers and discussion papers (5000-6000 words), commentaries and book reviews (1000-2000 words).
Please direct any queries about the journal to (journalofecohumanism@gmail.com).

Neuroscience & Himanities Università di Parma – Event

VENERDì 17 GIUGNO 2022 H. 17.00 (CET)

CLAUDIO PAOLUCCI

PRESENTS THE BOOK “COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS”

FOLLOW ON -LINE!!!

Call for Paper BRUMAL

The call for papers for articles for the sections “Monograph” and “Miscellaneous” for the Brumal. Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico /Brumal. Research Journal on the Fantastic is now open.

Scholars who wish to contribute to either of these two sections should send us their articles registering as authors on our web page. The Guidelines for Submissions may be found on the Submissions section of the web page.

Special Issue: “Fantastic Narratives and Cognition“, coord. Benito Elías García-Valero. 

Deadline: June 15, 2022

SEE: https://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/brumal/brumal/announcement/view/6

International May 2022 – Oltre il politicamente corretto

 

 

 

PRIN 2017 “Strategie più efficaci per il politicamente corretto. Un modello Retorico/Pragmatico della situazione di discorso totale”

The NewHums Research Centre is glad to announce following International Guests:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-May 26, 2022 (italian time) 11.00 -  Monastero dei Benedettini – Sala Rettangolare ID ZOOM: 917 6088 8939

Rodrigo Borba (Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro)

“Injourious signs: countering hate with hope in contemporary Brazil.”

- May 30  2022 it-h 16.00 – Monastero dei Benedettini – Aula 254 – ID ZOOM: 995 6688 2995

Jonatan Culpeper (Lancaster University)

“Activity types as a pragmatic approach to discourse”

- May 31 2022 it-h 10.00 – Monastero dei Benedettini – Aula 254 ID ZOOM: 934 6971 3850

Elena Semino (Lancaster University)

“Conflict in online discussion about vaccination”

To follow on ZOOM please contact emanuela.campisi@unict.it

 

International Society for the History of the Neurosciences

26th Meeting of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences, Rome (Italy) June 14-18, 2022

Il 26° Meeting della Società Internazionale per la Storia delle Neuroscienze (ISHN) si terrà a Roma (Italia) dal 14 al 18 giugno 2022.

Il convegno è organizzato dal Museo di Storia della Medicina, Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare, Sapienza Università di Roma in collaborazione con il Polo Museale e i Dipartimenti di Psicologia, Neuroscienze Umane e Scienze Odontostomatologiche e Maxillo-Facciali di Sapienza e in collaborazione con la Società Italiana di Scienze Umane in Medicina (SISUMed), Associazione Culturale Ospedali Storici Italiani (ACOSI) e Gruppo di Storia della Neurologia della Società Italiana di Neurologia (SIN-GSN)

La conferenza si svolgerà presso l’Università La Sapienza di Roma, l’Orto Botanico di Roma e l’Ospedale Santo Spirito in Sassia.

La conferenza sarà in presenza e trasmessa online, previa iscrizione.

Quote di registrazione scontate fino al 15 maggio 2022.

Programma preliminare scaricabile qui

Registrazione qui

ISHN Website: www.ishn.org
Conference Twitter: @26thIshn
Referente scientifico: Elisabetta Sirgiovanni (Sapienza)

The 26th Meeting of the International Society for the History of Neurosciences (ISHN) will be held in Rome (Italy) on June 14-18, 2022.

The conference is organized by the Museum of the History of Medicine, Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome in collaboration with the Museum Pole and the Sapienza Departments of Psychology, Human Neurosciences and Oral and Maxillo-Facial Sciences and in partnership with the Italian Society for Medical Humanities (SISUMed), Cultural Association for Italian Historical Hospitals (ACOSI), and Group for the History of Neurology of the Italian Society of Neurology (SIN-GSN).
The conference will take place at Sapienza University of Rome, Botanical Garden in Rome, and the Santo Spirito in Sassia Hospital.
The conference can be joined in-person and online upon registration.
Discounted fees are applicable until May 15, 2022.
A preliminary program is downloadable here

Link to registration here

ISHN Website: www.ishn.org
Conference Twitter: @26thIshn
Local Chair: Elisabetta Sirgiovanni (Sapienza)

Project

The Neuro Humanities Studies Network aims at creating a multidisciplinary research community in order to develop and structure a linking platform for neuro-scientific, cognitive topics and humanities.


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Research Network

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