Cfp: "Passionate Minds: Knowledge and the Emotions in Intellectual History," 11th International Conference, Society for Intellectual History, University of Bucharest, May 26-28, 2011.

The centrality of the emotions in all areas of human thought, action and expression has lately begun to be recognized and investigated with increasing interest within a variety of disciplines, from cognitive science and the philosophy of emotions to literary and anthropological studies. One central insight of such explorations is that the view of the separation and even opposition between cognition and affectivity is an unjust representation of the complexity of the life of both individuals and communities. Intellectual historians have also become sensitive to the issue and are in fact in a privileged position to bring to the fore the variety and richness of the approaches to the interplay of knowledge and the emotions in the history of thought.

This conference aims to address the topic of the interplay of emotions and cognition as it bears on historical views of epistemology, logic, psychology, theology, medicine, moral philosophy or aesthetics, on approaches to education and the transmission of knowledge, as well as on the dynamics of intellectual communities. We invite panels and individual papers that address any aspect of this theme with reference to any historical period, as well as relevant methodological and historiographic questions. There will also be general sessions devoted to other proposed intellectual historical topics.

Visit the conference website here: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/isih/?page_id=38.