Session 1

Stitching, piercing, cutting: from knit pussy hats to the Tiny Pricks embroidery project women’s craft has become an expression of 21st century dissent. Is this critical edge really a new aspect of craft? In this presentation, we take a look back at domestic crafts in the 19th century, with a particular eye to German creators of silhouettes and other paper cut-outs, to reconsider the history and critical potency of these so-called genteel or minor arts.

Understanding justice for future generations has emerged as one of the most significant challenges in ethical and political philosophy, particularly given the rapidly escalating environmental crises confronting the world. Unfortunately, many of the best-known traditional and modern accounts of justice fail badly when addressing the environment. The asymmetrical power relations between present and future generations render familiar notions of reciprocity, fairness, and reasonable agreement difficult to apply.

Contemporary discussions of world literature usually start from Goethe’s proclamation—first published in 1837—that “national literature is meaningless now, and the era of world literature is at hand.” The assertion was prompted, as Goethe’s secretary Eckermann observed, by the reading of a Chinese novel. And these same contemporary discussions of world literature usually present the topic as the spread of literary models from Europe to the Americas and thence to Asia, Africa, and ever remoter points of the globe.

Since their primordial beginnings about 200,000 years ago, human languages have always been at the mercy of the populations that speak them as their heritage vernaculars, have shifted to them, or have adopted them as their lingua francas. Using the history of English as the example, this session looks at why even the same language has not evolved uniformly over time and space.

In the last decades of the 16th century, while directing the construction of a monastery sponsored by King Philip II of Spain, architect and humanist Juan de Herrera immersed himself in the theories of medieval Majorcan preacher and philosopher Ramon Llull. Herrera was looking for a universal epistemological construction, a figure that could serve as matrix for all existing knowledge. As a result of his research, he settled on the cube, producing a new theory of the geometrical figure that crossed historical boundaries and combined science and religion.

This session focuses on the mainly visual evidence—on vase paintings and votive statues—that Greek women and male children wore knotted cords and strings of amulets to protect their bodies in Athens, on Cyprus, and in West Greece, and argues that the absence of similar amulets on naked adult males points to a restriction of use to females and immature males. Since textual evidence suggests that sick adult males also used amulets, this presenter argues that the category of amulet users embraces the weakened male adults and other cultural equivalents, such as women and children.

Even though we all know that language is a part of culture, it is common practice to study a new language by learning its grammar separately from the culture of the people who speak it. This presenter shows why this approach is problematic, and why teaching the language through authentic discourse samples is, in fact, a window to culture. Additionally, it can combat cultural stereotyping and more effectively lead to interactional and intercultural competence.