Date/Time
Date(s) - 5 Dec 2014 until 7 Dec 2014
12:00 AM - 12:00 AM
Location
Class of 1978 Pavilion, Special Collections Center
Category(ies) No Categories
CAS Graduate Student Conference
Capturing the Un-Representable: Artifacts and Landscapes Between Mental and Material Worlds
5-7 December 2014, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Humanistic disciplines typically focus their investigations on tangible, material remains, such as texts, artifacts, architecture, and landscapes, analyzing them as autonomous objects. However, material remains can also be understood as traces — evidence of greater images, landscapes, and spaces that existed in the minds of their creators and users. What anthropologists call the “life world” is processed in the mind and thus becomes a cultural construct, subsequently made manifest through design as objects, landscapes, and architectures. In turn, these physical manifestations may be used to access the imaginaire of the culture that constructed them. Our conference aims to examine what such material remains evince about the thoughts, imaginations, and mental motivations of ancient and medieval cultures (Old and New World) — that is, how do material remains mediate between mental and material worlds?
KEYNOTE Address by VERITY PLATT, Professor Classics & Art History, Cornell University
Free and open to the public
Sponsored by: The Center for Ancient Studies, The Department of the History of Art, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Cross-Cultural Conference Grants Program
For more info: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/ancient/gradconference2014.html