The Eighteenth-Century Body
A Major International Conference
St Hilda's College, Oxford
27th and 28th July 2001
Although corporeality is a central preoccupation in current art-
historical, literary and historical research, the body has never been
considered over such a range of disciplines and discursive fields as
this conference encompasses.
The fact that the eighteenth century was an age of empiricism
meant that it regarded understanding the physical body as integral
to the science of man. The body was seen as an aesthetic object,
a material entity in its own right, a bridge between physical and
psychic existence, a form of code (as in the pseudo-science of
physiognomy, the semiotic or metaphorical body), a hygienic
problem, a text, and so on. Artists, philosophers, physicians and
others considered it in connection with issues like sexual response
and gendered assumptions about "proper" human behaviour, and
the artistic and medical study of human biology and anatomy -
which greatly intensified during the period - necessarily focused on
it. So it was central to the theory and practice of artistic depiction,
to reflections on the different ways of physically communicating
thought and emotion, and debates about the referential possibilities
of language. These were all fertile themes of Enlightenment culture
and thought.
Speakers include: Ros Ballaster, Michel Delon, Anne Deneys-
Tunney, Beatrice Fink, Colin Jones, Thomas Laqueur, Nancy
Miller, Marcia Pointon, Roy Porter, Aileen Ribeiro, George
Rousseau, Elena Russo, Susan Siegfried, Anne Vila, Richard
Wrigley
Registration details:
http://www.ehrc.ox.ac.uk/events/bodyd.html
For more information about this conference, please contact Dr
Angelica Goodden, The Eighteenth-Century Body, St Hilda's
College, Oxford OX1 1DY, or email her at
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