Skepsi will be holding its 8th annual conference later in the month, under the theme ‘Disgust’. The event will be held over two days, 29 and 30 May 2015.
Skepsi is a peer-reviewed online journal produced within the School of European Culture and Languages (SECL). It is run by our PhD/MA candidates, with the support of established and early career academics, and commits to publishing the work of postgraduate students and emerging scholars.
Disgust has received growing critical attention among researchers in fields as varied as literature, philosophy of art, biology, psychology or gender studies. It is universally experienced even if the object of disgust can vary greatly according to the cultures. With the neurosciences increasingly gaining attention from the humanities for their project of explaining cognitive states and processes with reference to the material brain, it is opportune to reflect upon those experiences that strike the pit of the stomach before the head. Key research questions that will concern us are: Why is disgust so appealing? What is the relationship between physical and moral disgust? Can disgust be explained with the help of the theory of evolution? How is the rhetoric of disgust mobilised in far-right ideologies? These questions will be examined from a variety of perspectives including psychological and psychoanalytical approaches, sociological and anthropological perspectives, the representation of disgust in the arts, philosophical and political approaches, natural sciences and theories of the body.
The full programme is below:
Friday 29 May
09:30-10:00 Registration and coffee
10:00-10:15 Welcome and Introduction (Marine Authier and Dominique Carlini-Versini)
10:15-12:00 Panel 1: Disgust in Late 20th and 21st Century Fictions (Chair: Barbara Franchi)
- Christine Temko (Louvain, Belgium), ‘“Flesh Settles Against Bone… but Mexican is Sloppier”: Reversing Disgust Ethics and Aesthetics in Eugene Marten’s Waste’
- Sabina Sitoianu (Kent), ‘Spectacle of Disgust: Physical and Sociomoral Disgust at play in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) – a Metaphor for Thatcherite Vulgarity?’
- Massimo Bonifazio (Turin, Italy), ‘A Disgusting Field. Attitudes Towards Food in Günter Grass’ novels The Tin Drum and The Flounder’
12:00-12:20 Coffee break
12:20-14:05 Panel 2A: The Impact of Disgust on the Political Agenda and Lawmaking (Chair: Tom Watts)
- James F Downes (Kent/Hong Kong Baptist), ‘The 2014 European Parliament Elections: The March of the Extreme Right and The Politics of Disgust?’
- David Radlett (Kent), ‘On the Motivation of Laws by Disgust’
- Robin Mackenzie (Kent), ‘Cultural Reframing of Sexual Disgust’
Panel 2B: Sexuality and Bodily Disgust (Chair: Mélanie Lebon)
- Alan Le Grys (Kent), ‘Why is God Disgusted by Sex?’
- Sarah-Maria Schober (Basel, Switzerland), ‘Transcending Disgust: Habituation, Authority and the Decaying Body in Early Modern Anatomy’
- Riccardo Baldissone (Kent/Curtin, Australia), ‘Disgusting, really? Changing Feelings of Disgust as Witnesses of Human Plasticity’
14:05-15:10 Lunch break
15:10-16:20 Panel 3: 18th Century Fiction and Disgust (Chair: Melanie Dilly)
- Deborah Ross (Hawaii Pacific, US), ‘Phillis’s Foul Linen: Sexual Disgust at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century’
- Carson Bergstrom (Salford), ‘History is Shit: Satire, Scatology, and Cognitive Linguistics’
16:20-16:45 Coffee break
16:45-18:15 Keynote address Roger Giner-Sorolla (Kent), ‘Disgust is Unreasoning for a Reason’ (Chair: Mathilde Poizat-Amar)
18:15 Wine reception
20:00 Conference dinner (city centre)
Saturday 30 May 2015
09:30-10:00 Coffee
10:00-11:10 Panel 4: Disgust in Philosophical Discourses (Chair: David Bremner)
- Serene John-Richards (Kent), ‘On Disgust, or Encountering the Subject’
- Martijn Buijs (Johns Hopkins, US/ENS Paris, France), ‘The Force of Disgust in Rosenkranz’s Ästhetik des Hässlichen’
11:10-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-12:40 Panel 5: Disgust and Anthropology (Chair: Marine Authier)
- Jason Mast (Warwick), ‘Difference, Distance and Disgust: Deciphering a Strong Sensation’
- Clémence Jullien (Nanterre la Défense, France), ‘Dealing with Impurities of Childbirth: Contemporary Reconfiguration of Disgust in India’
12:40-13:40 Lunch break
13:40-14:50 Panel 6: Psychological Perspectives on Disgust (Chair: Matt Fysh)
- Tom Kupfer (Kent), ‘Why are Injuries Disgusting?’
- John Sabo and Roger Giner-Sorolla (Kent), ‘The Fictive Pass: Condemnation of Harm, But Not Purity, is Mitigated by Fictitious Contexts’
14:50-15:20 Coffee break
15:20-16:30 Panel 7: Women and Disgust in Literature and Film (Chair: Dominique Carlini- Versini)
- Anna Pilińska (Wroclaw, Poland), ‘Man Repellents: Adult Women in Nabokov’s, Kubrick’s, and Lyne’s versions of Lolita’
- Katie Jones (St Andrews), ‘The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Revolting Women in Contemporary Literature’
Registration for the event costs £10, which includes a wine reception. For details of how to register please see the page here: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/skepsi/