Money rules the world. It is ubiquitous and it is on our minds as often as sex and food. Money has shaped cultures from the birth of civilisation on. For some a necessary evil, for others a god, it creates power structures and underpins all areas of creativity. However, this has been surprisingly unacknowledged in literary and cultural studies.
The aim of this conference is to study diverse aspects of money as a cultural phenomenon. We invite colleagues working in all academic disciplines to submit proposals focusing on the following areas (which are not intended to be exclusive):
1. Representations of money: money in literature, art, film, music, opera, folklore, and myth. This section could include studies on money-related motifs and figures (gifts, treasures, debt, heart of stone, Midas, Judas, the miser, the spendthrift, the usurer, the merchant, the gambler, the pawnbroker, the criminal etc), and on the iconography of money.
2. Money and Language: the vocabulary of money, including sayings, idioms, metaphors.
3. Discourses on money: in literature, philosophy, sociology, economics, theology, law, psychoanalysis, ethics, and politics.
4. The Cultural history of money: forms of money from the origins of the first legal tender to cybercash, money as a medium, cultural practices, customs, habits, rites, superstitions, money and gender, money and power, money and institutions (banks, stock exchanges).
5. European dimensions: the Euro, money and (national) identity, intercultural comparisons, money and politics, money in European history.
It is expected that selected papers from the conference will be published.
Papers should be no longer than 30 minutes. Please submit abstracts of approximately 300 words by 31 January 2005.