Newswise — The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook (HISB) is planning an interdisciplinary conference on the subject of memory and emotion. These two words—memory and emotion—we use every day with confidence. Yet, research in the cognitive sciences and the humanities is throwing into question received notions of how and what we remember and feel. The conference takes place on Friday, October 22, 2010 from 10 AM – 6 PM in the Humanities Building, Room 1006.
“Different disciplines use the same words in quite distinctive ways, causing misunderstandings,” explains John Lutterbie, Associate Professor of Theatre and the conference co-director. He adds, “In this symposium we ask scholars in very different disciplines to engage each other in conversation about how they use these concepts in their research. How are they used in Music? In Psychology? In Sociology? These are the questions that will be asked in this all-too-rare engagement between the arts, humanities and sciences.”
The event is aimed at members of the public interested in this topic, as well as faculty and students in the fields of Art, Music, Theater, Psychology, Philosophy, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, English, Neuroscience and Sociology. “Our conference is unique in bringing together faculty in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts to consider ways emotion impacts memory and vice versa,” says HISB director Professor E. Ann Kaplan and conference co-director. “This reflects one of HISB's missions, namely increasing networking across the College of Arts and Sciences so as to stimulate new kinds of knowledge and intellectual collaborations,” she adds. The event is free and open to the public.
The keynote speaker of the conference will be Richard Shusterman, Florida Atlantic University, whose recent book Body Consciousness examines what embodiment and body awareness mean for understanding the creative self. Panels will follow with talks by sociologist Patricia Clough, New York University, musicologist Richard Ashley, Northwestern University, psychologist Elizabeth Phelps, New York University, and Stony Brook professors Richard Gerrig, Judith Lochhead, Lutterbie and Kaplan.
The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook was established in 1987 to promote interdisciplinary research across the university. Through conferences, distinguished lecturer series, faculty and student seminars, exhibitions, film series, and performances, HISB stimulates new kinds of knowledge at the cutting edge of intellectual life. Its varied programs have built, and continue to build, bridges between the human sciences and the medical, technical and natural sciences, and to reach out to the local community.
For more information please contact Dr. Olivia Mattis, [email protected] or 2-9957 or visit our website: www.stonybrook.edu/humanities.
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