"Making Sense: A Humanities Symposium," organized by English Department graduate students Bren Ram, Nina Cook, and Sophia Martinez-Abbud, will be taking place on March 12-13, 2021.
The event features five keynote speakers from scholars of five different disciplines - one on each of the five senses - and six panels featuring submissions from around the world, with a final roundtable at the end of the conference.
Gordon Hughes, Associate Professor of Art History, will deliver his presentation, “The Coxcomb and The Skeptical Critic; Or, Must You Mean What You Say When We See?,” on March 12, 2021 at 10:45am CST to focus on the sense of Vision/Sight. He will also be moderating the “Sensing Contemporary Art” panel on the second day of the conference.
In addition to teaching in the Department of Art History, Prof. Hughes is also the Co-Director of the Cinema and Media Studies Program. His recent book, "Resisting Abstraction: Robert Delaunay and Vision in the Face of Modernism," treats one artist’s work as a response to emerging scientific theories of sight. An engagement with continental theory informs Hughes’ writing and thinking about art, although it is always in the service of the primary act of viewing. Originally trained as a visual artist, a concern with close looking orients his approach to teaching, which takes uncovering and describing the vast complexities of artistic form-and the ways in which these complexities intersect with history and theory-as the central problem of art historical investigation.
Mark your calendars and visit http://makingsense.blogs.rice.edu/ for full program, panel breakdown, and keynote bios. Register for the symposium at this link.
This event is free and open to the public.