Casts and Casting: Perspectives from Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art. A workshop supported by the British Society of Aesthetics.

Casts and Casting: Perspectives from Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art. A workshop supported by the British Society of Aesthetics.

Saturday 10th November & Sunday 11th November 2018

University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, AL10 9EU.

To register, please email [email protected] by 1st November. Registration is free.

This workshop focuses on philosophical questions arising from the casting of particular actors in particular roles in, e.g., film, television and theatre. Papers will consider topics including the relationships of casting to fictional truth and to audience engagement, the aesthetic evaluation of individual instances of casting or of broader casting practices, and the relationship between diversity in casting and philosophical theories of artistic representation.

PROGRAMME

Saturday 10th November

9.30-10.30: Nils-Hennes Stear (Philosophy, University of Southampton) Casting Aspersions

10.35-11.35: Catharine Abell (Philosophy, University of Manchester) Non Traditional Casting and the Norms of Realism

11.45-12.45: Connell Vaughan (Dublin School of Creative Arts, Dublin Institute of Technology) Player Selection in Sport; From Eligibility to Style

12.45-13.25: Lunch

13.25-14.25: Kathleen Stock (Philosophy, University of Sussex), Actors as Props and Imaginative ‘Forgetting’

14.30-15.30: Anna Blackwell (Centre for Adaptations, De Montfort University), ‘And, hark, what discord follows!’: Casting The Hollow Crown for pre- and post-Brexit Britain

15.45-16.45: Victor I. Ukaegbu (Theatre, University of Bedfordshire) The Actor's Body as K (Constant) in Disruptions of Aesthetic and Cultural Norms in Performance

16.50-17.50: Beccy Collings (Film, Television and Media, UEA), ‘The more you know!’ – The Power of the Performer in Dark Sketch Comedy

Sunday 11 November

9.00-10.00: Richard Hanley (Philosophy, University of Delaware) Casting, Make-Believe, and Fictional Truth

10.05-11.05: Craig Bourne & Emily Caddick Bourne (Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire) The Contexts of Fictional Truth [Including a pause at 11am for the Armistice Day two minute silence]

11.15-12.15: Michael P. Young (Film, Theatre and Television, University of Reading) Casting Antiheroines – Female Leads in Television Political Thrillers

12.15-12.55: Lunch

12.55-13.55: Lin Feng (History of Art and Film, University of Leicester) Finding Next Star: Femininity, Casting and Post-Revolutionary Aesthetics in the 1980s’ Chinese Cinema

14.00-15.00: Enrico Terrone (Philosophy, University of Turin/University of Barcelona) Recasted Characters as Malfunctioning Artefacts

Please email [email protected] with any questions. We are grateful for funding from the British Society of Aesthetics.