CFP: The Pursuit of Happiness

[Jennifer Day]

> CALL FOR PAPERS:   INTERDISCIPLINARY NINETEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES  
> (INCS) CONFERENCE
>
> THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
>
> Sponsored by Bard College and Skidmore College
> at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
> April 24-26, 2009
>
> Keynote Speakers:
>
> Robert Frank, Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and  
> Professor of Economics,
> Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University  and  
> author of *Falling Behind:
> How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class* (U of California,  
> 2007),  *The Economic
> Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas* (Basic  
> Books, 2007) and
> *Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Success* (Princeton  
> UP, 2000).
>
> Darrin McMahon, Ben Weider Professor of History at Florida State  
> University and author of
> *Happiness: A History* (Atlantic Monthly Books, 2006) and *Enemies  
> of the Enlightenment:
> The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity*  
> (Oxford University Press,
> 2001).
>
> and
>
> Adam Potkay, Margaret L. Hamilton Professor of English at The  
> College of William and Mary
> and author of *The Story of Joy from the Bible to Late Romanticism*   
> (Cambridge
> University Press,  2007) and *The Passion for Happiness: Samuel  
> Johnson and David Hume*
> (Cornell University Press, 2000).
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Happiness our being's end and aim is at bottom, if we will count  
> well, not yet two
> centuries old in the world.
>        Thomas Carlyle.
>
> Following on the 2008 INCS theme, The Emergence of Human Rights,  
> this conference will
> focus on the pursuit of happiness, that elusive corollary to life  
> and liberty. What
> form did happiness and the comprehension of happiness take in the  
> nineteenth century?
> How, for example, did the legacy of the American and French  
> Revolutions shape
> nineteenth-century understandings of happiness? What were the  
> effects of burgeoning
> industrialism? In keeping with the recent turn to studies of  
> emotion, feeling, and affect
> within literary studies as well as psychology, economics, history,  
> and philosophy, we
> invite papers on the nineteenth-century contexts and genealogies for  
> such work.  And, in
> acknowledgment of our 2009 conference location. Saratoga Springs,  
> NY, we particularly
> encourage papers exploring Victorian pleasure-seeking as having  
> provided popular, if
> contested, routes to happiness.
>
> Topics may include:
>
> Joy
> Luxury and pleasure in a democratic republic
> Wealth
> Leisure
> Beauty, art
> Speculation (gambling, chance)
> Family, friendship, love
> Recreation
> Rights, liberties
> Race, class, gender and ethnic perspectives on happiness
> Leisure
> Virtue, working for the good of others
> Health, spas, hygiene
> The cultivation of emotions
> Shopping / consumer desire
> Vacations / travel
> Misery, the absence of happiness;
>    and pain, the opposite of pleasure
> Architecture of happiness
>
> INCS encourages interdisciplinary perspectives integrating:   
> Literature, Law, Political
> Science, Philosophy, Theology, History, Art History, History of  
> Science, Sociology,
> Anthropology, Psychology, Economics, Health Sciences.
>
> 200 word abstracts by October 15, 2008 to Deirdre d'Albertis, Bard  
> College via e-mail at:
> dalberti at bard.edu
>
> For more information on INCS see:  www.nd.edu/~incshp/
> Selected conference papers published in *Nineteenth-Century Contexts*
>
> Deirdre d'Albertis
> Bard College
>
> Barbara Black
> Skidmore College
> --
> -- 
>
>
>
>
>




----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Day
Assistant Professor of Russian
Co-director, Russian Studies Program
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
jenday at bard.edu





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