Grounding the Sacred Through Literature and the Arts Conference
Australian Catholic University, Sydney
23-26 July, 2015

Conference Website

The Grounding the Sacred conference invites papers and presentations from artists, writers, musicians, academics and religious who are interested in the interplay between the arts and the sacred. The conference asks how literature and the arts can make the sacred tangible: do they enable us to touch the sacred? Do they offer a way of structuring our experiences of the sacred? Do they provide a common ground for people of different faiths – or none – to explore the ineffable? And where does creativity sit in relation to religion and the search for meaning? Are a sense of the sacred and the means to express it essential for human flourishing?

Abstracts of 250 words are invited for 20 minute papers and presentations that address the conference theme. They may be from creators talking about their work as it expresses the sacred; from researchers seeking to explain the relationship between creativity, religion and well-being; and from interpreters bringing to light the sacred dimensions of pre-existing creative works. Submissions should include the author’s name, affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract, and a short biography. Potential presenters who wish to have their work considered for inclusion in a special Australian issue of Literature and Theology should forward full papers.

Abstracts should be sent to Elaine Lindsay at slaconference@acu.edu.au by 27 February 2015.
Full papers intended for Literature and Theology are due by 13 March 2015.

Inquiries can be made of the conveners, michael.griffith@acu.edu.au or elaine.lindsay@acu.edu.au.

Criminal Law and Emotions in European Legal Cultures: From 16th Century to the Present
Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
21-22 May, 2015

Keynotes:

• Elizabeth Lunbeck (Vanderbilt University)
• David Sabean (UCLA)

Roundtable Discussion

• Dagmar Ellerbrock (MPIB/TU Dresden)
• Terry Maroney (Vanderbilt University)

Legal institutions and jurists have often perceived themselves and promoted an image of their
role and activity as essentially ‘rational’. Yet, emotions have always been integral to the law,
particularly in the case of criminal law. Emotions were and are taken explicitly or implicitly into
consideration in legal debates, in law-making, in the codified norms and in their application,
especially in relation to paramount categories such as free will, individual responsibility and
culpability, or the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of a crime. Emotions could directly
or indirectly play a role in defining what conduct was legally relevant, worthy of legal
protection or in need of legal proscription; in why and how it was necessary to punish, and what
feelings punishment was meant to evoke.

Legal scholars in the past did not shun the complex relationship between law and emotions. Yet
it is in the last two decades that specialists from different disciplines, from law theory to
psychology, from philosophy to history, have shown an increasing and lively interest in
unravelling the role played by passions, feelings and sentiments in criminal law. Special
attention has been focused on three key areas: norms, practices and people.

This two-day conference seeks to historicize the relationship between law and emotions,
focusing on the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It aims to ask how legal
definitions, categorizations and judgments were influenced by, and themselves influenced,
moral and social codes; religious and ideological norms; scientific and medical expertise; and
perceptions of the body, gender, age, social status. By examining the period between the
sixteenth century and the present day, this conference also seeks to challenge and problematize the demarcation between the early modern and the modern period, looking at patterns and continuities, as well as points of fissure and change, in the relationship between law and emotions. In particular, it seeks to question the extent to which ideas about law and emotions fundamentally shifted around the eighteenth century—the traditional marker of the ‘modern’ period.

This conference will explore how legal professionals, as judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys
and other legal officials, handled different forms of knowledge about emotions in the practice of law, in accordance with, or in opposition to, general social and cultural attitudes and public
opinion. It will further investigate the presence and absence—and their meanings—of emotions
in the courtroom, as a fundamental aspect of criminal law practices. It will take into
consideration not only the emotions which were shown, expected and provoked but also the
ones which were repressed, controlled or proscribed by different legal actors and the public.
Finally it will also include analysis of how legal understandings of emotions were portrayed in
the media and in the wider society.

We invite submissions from scholars of different historical disciplines, working on early modern
and modern periods and particularly encourage proposals from scholars working on Northern,
Central and Eastern European countries, and the non-Western world. The conference will be held in English.

Accommodation and travel expenses for those presenting will be covered by the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development. If you are interested in participating in this conference,
please send us a proposal of no more than 300 words and a short CV by 1 October 2014 to cfp-emotions@mpib-berlin.mpg.de. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes, in order to allow time for questions and discussion.

Convenors:

• Dr. Laura Kounine, Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin
• Dr. Gian Marco Vidor, Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin