Call for Papers: the First Estonian Annual Conference of Humanities
On April 10–12, 2024, the First Estonian Annual Conference of Humanities will be held in Tallinn titled Future humanities: how the humanities shape society in an era of transformative changes. Our project’s panel Innovative cultural practices in the first half of the 20th century and their reflections today: critique, crises, affects is inviting interested participants.
Call for Papers:
The alleged crisis of humanities stems from the technocratic and capitalist framework and its demand for measurable benefits, technological innovation and economic benefit. The humanities have self-justified within the same logic of profit, emphasising that a benefit, albeit immeasurable, is produced via research. This panel here discusses alternatives to such an approach.
For this purpose, we delve into the discernibly affective and ambivalent aesthetic practices that prevailed in Estonia during the first half of the 20th century, and their contemporary counterparts. We assume that both eras are most diversely characterised by the (new) decadent aesthetics and the accompanying unstable value system that breaks through in moments of crisis. Thereby we will examine through different analytic centres (including feminism, left-wing ideas, the construction of nationalism, including national romantic affects and populism) the radical cultural phenomena of the first half of the past century and of present, which distance from utilitarianism.
In this context, what value does the “new decadence studies” provide? Why is it important to read literature published (more than) a hundred years ago and link it with contemporary culture? What tools does such research provide for making sense of past and present crises (eco-catastrophe, military conflicts, proliferation of extremist politics, culture wars, control mechanisms of gender and sexuality) caused by social and historical changes?
Papers, for example on the following topics are welcome:
- The ambivalent and affective aesthetics of the early 20th century and its resonances today;
- Forms of (new) decadence in understanding social and historical changes;
- Aesthetics, humanities and utilitarianism;
- Humanities in the tension field between science and art;
- Making sense of cultural history as crisis management of contemporary culture;
- Manifestations of (anti)feminism and radical creative expressions.
The following papers will be presented in the panel: Leo Luks Decadent aesthetics as a programme for humanities, Mirjam Hinrikus (Anti)feminism in literary decadence and modernism: the case of Tammsaare, and Aare Pilv On the aestheticist substratum of leftism.