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Rather than focusing explicitly on negative emotions, this conference centres negative contexts to explore the emotional repertoires of adversity. Diseases, wars, and political, economic and cultural crises form a topical backdrop to historical investigations into the mobilisation of fear, rage, hate and disgust as well as unexpected instances of courage, love, hope and joy in times and places defined by calamity, catastrophe, and hostility. We welcome proposals that challenge, or even disrupt, assumptions about the emotional causes and consequences of adversity, conflict and ill health, particularly in relation to the dynamics of collective experience – whether consonant or dissonant – across a variety of different scales (local, national, global).
We are especially interested in proposals that examine music and sound in contexts of adversity, as well as the wide spectrum of historical sources that extend beyond language, such as architecture, space, material culture, painting, photography, and more. We particularly welcome contributions that take theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary risks in order to integrate emotional, sensory, cognitive, and embodied dimensions into the cultural and political varieties of historical experience.
We invite proposals for three-person panels and individual papers (20 minutes). For whole panels, please submit an abstract for the whole panel of no more than 400 words, with individual paper titles and brief biographical notes for each speaker. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words, with a brief biographical note. Submissions should be sent to SHE2027@mdw.ac.at by 30 September 2026. Applicants will be notified of the outcome by 15 December 2026.
Please see website for complete details.
