CFP: Literary Fiction and Rationality

Plenary Speakers are:

Garry Hagberg (Bard College)

Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University)

Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex)

Literature gives us a unique opportunity to examine persons and their lives. For example, literature may be seen as illuminating rationality and the different kinds of reasons that agents have for their actions, beliefs, and judgements. It also enables us to examine rationality as a property of a person, and reasons as constituted by the context of a person’s life narrative. Literature may also be considered a source of empirical, moral, and aesthetic reasons and beliefs. The purpose of this conference is to critically discuss these and other conceptions of the relation between literary fiction and rationality.

We welcome paper submissions for the two-day conference, to be held in Tampere, Finland, on May 30-31 2013. Topics to be discussed might include, but are not limited to:

- literature in the constitution of rationality

- literature and human agency & action

- irrationality in literature

- rationality, irrationality, and creativity

- rationality and literary interpretation

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by email to Hanne Appelqvist: hanne.appelqvist[at]helsinki.fi. They should include the author’s name, affiliation, contact information, and the title of the paper. Accepted papers will receive 35 minutes each (25 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion). The deadline for proposals is Friday 15 February 2013. Proposals will be considered by the conference committee: Leila Haaparanta, Jukka Mikkonen, Jenni Tyynelä, and Hanne Appelqvist.

The conference is organized by the research project Judgment and Human Rationality, funded by the Academy of Finland. For further information, go to: http://www.uta.fi/yky/judgement.