Dear list,
News of a conference I am co-organizing in Bristol, if of interest to
anyone,
Best wishes,
Nick
Heavenly Discourses: Myth, Astronomy and Culture
http://www.astronomy-and-culture.org/index.html
2ND ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
An Interdisciplinary Conference
Co-Chairs
Nicholas Campion (School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, Sophia
Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity
Saint David)
and
Darrelyn Gunzburg (Department of History of Art, University of Bristol)
Wills Memorial Building
University of Bristol, UK
14-16 October 2011
Conference Theme
On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space and the
first to orbit the Earth. 2011 sees the fiftieth anniversary of that event.
In almost every human culture the sky functions as a backdrop for mythical
encounters, employing the celestial environment as a stage set for
narratives of human and divine experience. That moment when human beings
first left the planet gave us a different perspective on the sky. This
conference will bring together scholars to examine the relationship between
the heavens and culture through the arts, literature, religion and
philosophy, both in history and the present. We invite proposals from
academics in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Topics may
include astronomy and music, literature, painting and the visual arts,
architecture, religion, history and society.
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Ronald Hutton
Professor of History, The University of Bristol.
"Prehistoric British Astronomy: Whatever Happened to the Earth and Sun?"
Professor Elliot Wolfson
Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York
University.
"The Sefer Yetzirah and the creation cosmology of the Old Testament"
Professor Roger Beck
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto.
"The Ancient Mithraeum as a Model Universe"
Professor Gerry Gilmore
Professor of Experimental Philosophy, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
University.
"Artistic representations of astronomical time"
Professor David Malin
Adjunct Professor, RMIT Melbourne Australia. British-Australian astronomer
and photographer, former Anglo-Australian Observatory
"From Microscope To Telescope"
Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson,
Department of Physics, Imperial College, London
The space programme (TBC)
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