CFP: Thinking with Tea - Cross-cultural Reflections

  Call for Abstracts: Thinking with Tea – Cross-cultural Reflections

                                    02-03 September 2024                                     

                        University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland

Tea has played a significant role in fostering cultural exchange between different regions and traditions throughout history. While tea has taken root in various forms in many cultures, mos are likely to associate the practice with China, its progenitor, or Japan, its cultivator. Yet, tea has a strong global presence and has flourished within Great Britain, the Americas, parts of Africa, Turkey and in Russia to name a few. 

Our conference, Thinking with Tea – Cross-cultural Reflections aims to explore these myriad forms tea has taken where it has flourished. Specifically, as our title suggests, the conference’s goal is to think with tea: In which ways has tea inspired thinking and how can these ways of thinking inform philosophy in the present? Further, we invite interrogation of the limits of philosophical thinking from the point of view of tea as a corporeal practice that operates beyond/before/between thought and its propositional analysis and forms of truth. The aim of the conference is thus twofold: To explore philosophical thought in relation to tea from the historical perspective, and to investigate how ways of thinking with tea can be put into practice within philosophy. 

The conference Thinking with Tea encourages scholars to think geographically in broad terms about and with tea. As such, scholars are encouraged to draw from their own cultural and philosophical backgrounds to create novel philosophical approaches to thinking with tea.

The submissions may concern, without being limited to, the following themes:

• Tea culture, history of tea, and the philosophy of tea in the various regions where it has taken root.

• Novel and creative applications of tea practice into/as philosophical thinking.

• Philosophical reflections on the meaning of tea in everyday life.

• Ethical, aesthetic, existential or phenomenological analysis and/or critique of tea practice 

• The role of women, feminist analysis and gender narratives in tea cultures 

• Inter-cultural dialogue between tea practice and/or tea philosophy.

• Critical interrogation into tea practice and issues of gender, race, class and colonialism.  

• Philosophic

• al interpretations of major figures/masters, aesthetic or practice innovators in tea history.  

• Exploration into actual or possible innovations in contemporary tea practice and their philosophical implications.  

• Depiction of the tea ceremony in art, cinema, literature, and contemporary media

Submission guidelines

-   Deadline for abstracts: April 30th, 2024

-   Notification of acceptance by email: May 15th, 2024

-   Length of abstract: 250—500 words

-   Language of the conference: English

-   Keywords: Please include 5 to 10 keywords with your abstract

Submit to: [email protected]

If interested in attending the conference but not presenting, please contact the above email address for registration.