CFP: Skin Manuscripts, Copenhagen (15.04.2024)
SKIN MANUSCRIPTS
International Workshop at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, September 26-27, 2024
Human skin is not only our largest biological organ, but also “a potentially ever-changing personal tapestry that tells the world about who we are or who we want to be” (Jablonski, 2006). It bears witness to the toll of years but also to joy, violence, and trauma. Consequently, our understanding of skin extends far beyond a conceptual description that attempts to reduce it to its empirical nature. Rather, dermal phenomena need to be understood in terms of complex connections between medicine, anthropology, biology, psychology, culture, and cultural practices such as reading and writing (literature) and art. Skin has long been a unique canvas for the study of cultural and social phenomena. The ‘legibility’ of skin manuscripts, a term yet to be established, continues to provide important insights into the interrelated narratives of philosophy, anthropology, medical history, literature, and art. Historically, the study of human skin has relied heavily on both images and detailed (clinical) descriptions to document and diagnose disease, thus proving to be an inexhaustible resource for exploring fundamental philosophical and aesthetic ideas that are intimately intertwined with the context of European intellectual history as well as European colonialism and racism. In dialogue with approaches from a variety of disciplines, this international workshop will bring together reflections on new technologies, on the history of our changing assumptions about what (human) skin is, with a wide range of literary and artistic representations of the ‘skins’ we all inhabit.
Papers presented at the workshop may but need not refer explicitly or systematically to the above outline, but they should address some of the following topics:
Skin Through Time: Historical Conceptualizations of (Human) Skin. How have historically changing epistemological basic assumptions shaped the perception and description of human skin in (European) philosophy and intellectual history, but also in literature and art? Can we identify fundamental epistemological turning points, and how would we imagine a new taxonomy from today’s perspective? In an effort to refine our descriptive apparatus, how can we improve the classification of the various transformations in the conceptualization of human skin?
Skin Stories. Writing (on) Human Skin. How do literary texts represent, echo, and reflect the various concepts and assumptions about what human skin was or is? How does literature contribute to our understanding of this complex subject by providing an explicitly aesthetic perspective? Can we identify a ‘poetics of skin,’ and, if so, how would we attempt to define its characteristics? Also, are there particular periods or authors who are more concerned with the representation of human skin, and what factors contribute to this concern? What role does the new emphasis on materiality at the end of the nineteenth century play in shaping our understanding of the profound affinity between human skin and the practice of writing and reading? How can the term ‘skin manuscript’ be understood from now on?
Tongues and Textures: Skin and Language. How does language, through idioms and metaphors, reflect and shape our perceptions of the tapestry that is human skin? Metonymy for each of us, skin can be metaphorically described as surface (skin-deep), screen (hide), texture (from tough to silken), or canvas (tattoos). How do different languages and literary genres encode this complex relationship between identity and skin through tropes, idioms, and proverbs?
Canvas and Stage: Portraying the Skin and the Body in Art and Performance. Art provides a space for asking questions that cannot be answered normatively or empirically, thus challenging reductive materialism and/or anthropocentric normativity. How is this reflected in objects and artworks, and how do they deal with representations of skin-like layers and the interplay of surfaces, text, and skin? What norms and concepts are reflected or rejected ‘through the skin’? How does the skin become a significant site of artistic expression within performance art, as exemplified by figures such as Marina Abramović or Valie Export, and within popular culture forms such as circus, pantomime, and striptease?
Cutaneous Influence: Power Dynamics in Racialized and Gendered Narratives of Skin. Exploring the intersectionality of gender, race, and power, how is (especially) women’s skin inscribed by power relations, and what are the politics at play in this complex dynamic? How do representations of skin relate to discourses of class and identity?
Mindscapes on Skin: The Tapestry of the Mind in European Medical History and Psychiatry. How do diseases, including psychic ailments with visible manifestations on the body’s surface, appear in literary texts and works of art, and what body images are associated with these representations? In what ways do texts make use of ancient/contemporary sources for medical or pharmacological prescriptions, even skin care and beauty treatments? What can we learn from psychodermatology, a branch of psychosomatic medicine that studies the interaction between the mind and the skin? And how does this relate to the depiction of human skin in earlier scientific and historical documents such as skin atlases or illustrated textbooks of anatomy?
From Microbiome to Machine Interaction: Skin and (New) Technology. What happens when our understanding of skin is transformed in an era of unprecedented technological innovation, particularly in the dynamic interplay between the virtual and the real? How is the discovery of the microbiome helping to reshape our perception of skin, and how does the design of artificial skin influence our notions of skin in the context of advancing technology? In response to the radical paradigm shift of the last decade, where human-to-human interactions have morphed into human-to-machine interactions, how does literature and art navigate and reflect this transformative scenario?
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, along with a brief curriculum vitae, to irina.hron@hum.ku.dk by April 15, 2024. Participants will be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by April 30, 2024.
SKIN MANUSCRIPS is funded by the Centre for Modern European Studies (Copenhagen – Lund – Malmö) and by Horizon 2020. Hotel costs and meals are covered in full, travel expenses are covered where possible. Conference speakers will have the opportunity to contribute their papers to an invited special issue on “Skin Manuscripts,” which will be published in a leading international peer-reviewed journal.
Date: 26.-27.9.2024
Conference language: English
Deadline for abstracts: 15.04.2024
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark