Friday, March 4, 2011

Heavenly Discourses: Myth, Astronomy and Culture

2ND ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
An Interdisciplinary Conference

Co-Chairs

Nicholas Campion (School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
and
Darrelyn Gunzburg (Department of History of Art, University of Bristol)

Wills Memorial Building
University of Bristol, UK
14-16 October 2011

Conference Theme

On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. 2011 sees the fiftieth anniversary of that event. In almost every human culture the sky functions as a backdrop for mythical encounters, employing the celestial environment as a stage set for narratives of human and divine experience. That moment when human beings first left the planet gave us a different perspective on the sky. This conference will bring together scholars to examine the relationship between the heavens and culture through the arts, literature, religion and philosophy, both in history and the present. We invite proposals from academics in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Topics may include astronomy and music, literature, painting and the visual arts, architecture, religion, history and society.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Ronald Hutton
Professor of History, The University of Bristol.
"Prehistoric British Astronomy: Whatever Happened to the Earth and Sun?"

Professor Elliot Wolfson
Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University.
"The Sefer Yetzirah and the creation cosmology of the Old Testament"

Professor Roger Beck
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto.
"The Ancient Mithraeum as a Model Universe"

Professor Gerry Gilmore
Professor of Experimental Philosophy, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University.
"Artistic representations of astronomical time"

Professor David Malin
Adjunct Professor, RMIT Melbourne Australia. British-Australian astronomer and photographer, former Anglo-Australian Observatory
"From Microscope To Telescope"

Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson,
Department of Physics, Imperial College, London
The space programme (TBC)

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