[SydPhil] Cinematic Ethics Symposium, MGSM building, Macquarie University, Aug 27-29

Tue Aug 25 13:55:58 AEST 2015

Dear All,

The following item may be of interest (speaker schedule attached):

As part of ARC Future Fellowship Project (FT 130100334), *Cinematic Ethics:
Exploring Ethical Experience through Film*, I am pleased to announce the
following event at Macquarie University:

*Cinematic Ethics Symposium*

Macquarie University, Sydney

MGSM Executive Conference Centre, MGSM Building, Theatre 101

https://www.conferences.mgsm.com.au/macquarie-park-executive-conference-centre/location/

*August 27-29*, 2015

Despite the flourishing of philosophy of film in recent decades, there have
been few explicit theoretical investigations of the relationship between
ethics and cinema. That film has an ethical potential—for exploring moral
issues, ethically-charged situations, or moral “thought experiments”—is
clear, however, from the way in which philosophical film theorists have
explored cinema from a variety of philosophical perspectives. Indeed, film
theory, philosophy of film could be described as undergoing an “ethical
turn”—along with other areas of the humanities—in starting to reflect upon
cinema as a distinctive way of thinking through ethical concerns. Yet
philosophers, on the whole, have given the question of ethics and film
scant theoretical attention, in a more philosophical sense, even within
aesthetics, philosophy of film, or film theory.

This symposium is thus dedicated to exploring the relationship between
cinema and ethics and investigates the possibility of a ‘cinematic ethics’.
This is a conception of cinema as providing new ways of evoking and
expressing* ethical experience*: an experiential approach to thinking
through ethics, one that proceeds via the aesthetic experience, emotional
engagement, and cognitive understanding that cinema so richly provides.
Cinema’s power of perceptual fascination, emotional engagement, and
cognitive understanding give it a remarkable capacity to evoke ethically
significant experience with the potential to provoke philosophical
thinking.  ‘Cinematic ethics’ builds on the influential idea of ‘film as
philosophy’, that is, of film-philosophy as providing new ‘paths for
thinking’ that have ethical significance, that create new ‘syntheses’ of
thought and image with the power to exercise our moral imaginations, expand
our ethical horizons, but also to provoke thought.

The invited speakers at this symposium will address these and related
issues from a variety of philosophical, theoretical, and cultural-ethical
perspectives, explored through a wide range of cinematic works. Critical
and creative interdisciplinary inquiry into the productive relationship
cinema and ethics will be the key focus of this two and a half day event.

*Guest International Speakers*:

Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary University, London), ‘Murdoch and *Margaret*:
Learning a Moral Life’

David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow), ‘The Act of Killing Žižek:
Ethics and Transnational History in a World of Cinemas’

*Australian Speakers*:

Mathew Abbott (Federation University, Ballarat), ‘Absorption and
Spectatorship in Kiarostami's *Shirin*’

Chris Falzon (University of Newcastle), ‘Experiencing *Force Majeure’*

Fiona Jenkins (Australian National University), ‘Conditions of Cohabitation
in the Work of Cinema’

Angelos Koutsourakis (University of Queensland), ‘Art cinema in the
Anthropocene: Jessica Woodworth’s & Peter Brosens’ trilogy on the conflict
between humans and nature’

David Macarthur (University of Sydney), ‘A More Human Than Human Jesus: A
Reading of *Bladerunner*’

Philip Martin (Macquarie Unversity), ‘Ask This of Nishida: *Rikyū ni
Tazuneyo*'s Aesthetics of Resistance’

Ted Nannicelli (University of Queensland), ‘Ethical Criticism and the
Nature of Cinematic Interpretation’

Matthew Sharpe (Deakin University), ‘Guest, Host Stranger: *Loin des Hommes*
and Camus’ Algerians’

Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie University), ‘Mood Revisited: From Affective
Aesthetics to Cinematic Ethics’

Jane Stadler (University of Queensland), ‘Empathy in Film: Embodied
Simulation and the Moral Imagination’

Please join us for this exciting two and a half day interdisciplinary
exploration of cinematic ethics. Attendance is free and open to the public
but an email RSVP is required for catering purposes:
robert.sinnerbrink at mq.edu.au

For all inquiries please contact Robert Sinnerbrink on the email address
cited above.

-- 
*Dr Robert Sinnerbrink*

Senior Lecturer & Australian Research Council Future Fellow

*Department of Philosophy  |  * Level 7, W6A Building
Balaclava Rd
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

*T:* +61 2 9850 9935*  |  **F:* +61 2 9850 8892* |
robert.sinnerbrink at mq.edu.au <robert.sinnerbrink at mq.edu.au>*

Staff Profile
<http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/staff/robert_sinnerbrink/>
 Departmental Video
<http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/about_us/>
Academia Page <http://mq.academia.edu/RobertSinnerbrink>

Forthcoming Book, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through
Film <http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138826168/>

Editorial Board, *Film-Philosophy*
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p> Journal; Associate Editor, *Film
and Philosophy* Journal

Deputy Chair, Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy
<http://www.ascp.org.au/> (ASCP)

[image: Macquarie University] <http://mq.edu.au/>

CRICOS Provider Number 00002J. Think before you print.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.

This message is intended for the addressee named and may
contain confidential information. If you are not the intended
recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed
in this message are those of the individual sender, and are not
necessarily the views of Macquarie University.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20150825/b8bf8a7e/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Cinematic Ethics Speaker Schedule.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 318742 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20150825/b8bf8a7e/attachment-0002.pdf>