2nd Global Conference
Madness - Probing the Boundaries
Monday 14th September - Thursday 17th September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford
Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks to explore issues of
madness across historical periods and within cultural, political and
social contexts. We are also interested in exploring the place of
madness in persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of
critical perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative inter, multi and
post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand the
place of madness in the constitution of persons, relationships and the
complex interlacing of self and other.
In particular papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of
the following themes:
1. The Value of Madness or Why is it that We Need Madness?
~ Critical explorations: beyond madness/sanity/insanity
~ Continuity and difference: always with us yet never quite the same
~ Repetition and novelty: the incessant emergence and re-emergence of
madness
~ Profound attraction and desire; fear of the abyss and the radical unknown
~ Naming, defining and understanding the elusive
2. The Passion of Madness or Madness and the Emotions
~ Love as madness; uncontrollable passion; unrestrainable love
~ Passion and love as a remaking of life and self
~ Gender and madness; the feminine and the masculine
~ Anger, resentment, revenge, hate, evil
~ I would rather vomit, thank you; revulsion, badness and refusing to comply
3. The Boundaries of Madness or Resisting Normality
~ Madness, sanity and the insane
~ Being out of your mind, crazy, deranged … yet, perfectly sane
~ Deviating from the normal; defining the self against the normal
~ Control, self-control and the pull of the abyss
~ When the insane becomes normal; when evil reins social life
4. Lunatics and the Asylum or Power and the Politics of Madness
~ The social allure and fear of madness; the institutions of confining
mad people
~ Servicing normality by castigating the insane and marginalizing lunatics
~ Medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law and the constructions of
madness; madness as illness
~ Contributions of the social sciences to the making and the critique of
the making of madness
~ Representations, explanations and the critique of madness from the
humanities and the arts
5. Creativity, Critique and Cutting Edge
~ Madness as genius, outstanding, out of the ordinary, spectacularly
brilliant
~ The art of madness; the science of madness
~ Music, painting, dance, theatre: it is crazy to think of art without
madness
~ The language and communication of madness: who can translate?
~ Creation as an unfolding of madness
6. Unrestrained and Boundless or The Liberating Promise of Madness
~ Metaphors of feeling free, unrestrained, capable, lifted from reality
~ Madness as clear-sightedness, as opening up possibilities, as
re-visioning of the world
~ The future, the prophetic, the unknown; the epic, the heroic and the
tragic
~ The unreachable and untouchable knowledge of madness
~ The insanity of not loving madness
7. Lessons for Self and Other or Lessons for Life about and from Madness
~ Cultural and social constructions of madness; images of the mad,
crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal
~ What is real? Who defines reality? Learning from madness how to cope
with reality
~ Recognising madness in oneself; relativising madness in others
~ Love, intimacy, care and the small spaces of madness
~ Critical and ethical implosions of normality and normalness; sane in
insane places and insane in sane places
Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.
Pre-formed panel proposals are also encouraged.
The 2009 meeting of Madness will run alongside our project on Monsters
and the Monstrous - Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil and we
anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We
welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues of
Madness and Monsters for joint project sessions.
Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 17th April 2009. If an abstract is
accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by
Friday 7th August 2009.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Madness 2 Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace!
We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Maria Vaccarella
Hub Leader, Making Sense Of:
E-mail: maria.vaccarella@yahoo.it
Abel B Franco
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, California State
University, USA
E-mail: abelbenjamin@yahoo.com
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: mad2@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the ‘Making Sense Of:’ series of research
projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for
and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN
eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into
a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we
are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or
subsistence.
For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/madness/
For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/madness/call-for-papers/
