This workshop applies evolutionary theory to human imaginative culture, including literature and film. The workshop includes six talks by scholars in the evolutionary humanities, who reject the claim that human nature and culture constitute separate domains or opposing principles. Rather, human culture both expresses and defines the human condition. An adequate conception of the human animal must include a conception of its richly social, imaginative, and symbolic modes of life. 

Registration

Program

12:00-12:15 Introduction by Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen (AU)

12:15-13:15 Literature and the Current Model of Imagination in Empirical Psychology. Joseph Carroll

13:15-13:45 The Evolutionary Vision of H. G. Wells. Emelie Jonsson

13:45-14:30 Break (and cake)

14:30-15:30 Evolution, Moral Emotions, and Film. Torben Grodal

15:30-16:00 Getting the Laugh: An Evolutionary Approach to Film Comedy. Marc Hye-Knudsen

16:00-16:30 The Evolutionary Underpinnings of Recreational Fear. Mathias Clasen

16:30 End of workshop

Organizers

Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen (jkc@cc.au.dk) and Mathias Clasen (mc@cc.au.dk)

Funded by the Interacting Minds Centre, the research program Media, Communication and Society, the PhD program Art, Literature and Cultural Studies, and the School of Communication and Culture, AU