The Research Training Group 1876 "Early Concepts of Humans and Nature: Universal, Specific, Interchanged" invites to its International Conference “Concepts of Humans and Nature between Specificity and Universality” to be held in 2019 on July, 15th–17th at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (Germany).
The Mainz Research Training Group (RTG) “Early Concepts of Humans and Nature: Universal, Specific, Interchanged” aims to understand concepts of humans and nature, their origin, development and dissemination, by focusing on texts, iconography and material evidence from the Near East, North-Eastern Africa and Europe dating from about 100000 BCE to the Middle Ages.
The international conference aims to deal with the question of possibly universal basic patterns of concepts and their causes as well as with the specific implementations of concepts of humans and nature in early societies.
We would like to foster a discussion on our research questions in an international and interdisciplinary environment with three panels which are in line with the research projects our RTG is currently working on:
A) Conceptualizing Sky and Heaven – Human interactions with meteorological and cosmic phenomena
B) „Dead Bodies”– Facing specific and universal aspects of death from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
C) Zones, Parts, Functions – The relationship between body experience and body concepts
Papers are welcome from all academic fields that are related to these research questions. We are also looking for papers from a cross-cultural, comprehensive or theoretical perspective.
We ask those interested in delivering a paper to send an abstract of about 300 words along with a short academic biography to grk1876@uni-mainz.de by Monday, 31st of January 2019.
Papers can be presented in English or German. Travel and accommodation costs will be paid for all successful applicants.
For more information on the conference, in particular for more information on the panels, please visit:
https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb07-grk-man-nature/international-conference-1/