ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

In this panel we will explore human time, that is to say the anthropological or socio-psychological dimension of time, as it is expresses itself in different media such as literature, film, the visual arts, etc. Human time, as opposed to objective time (i.e., geological time or what Aristotle called in his Physics “the time of the stars”), is a development of the subjective theory of time first formulated in Augustine’s Confessions. However, “human time” is not reducible to subjectivity, but expands the horizon within which putatively “subjective” notions of time can become significant for a critique of culture. In other words, we will ask how notions of time inform our ideas about cultural artefacts (e.g. in terms of collective memory), paying particular attention to their mode of appearance (representations in and of time). This seminar thus proposes to examine various questions related to how time is an issue for and an integral part of the human being, using art “the quintessential human activity in which man reflects on himself” as a starting point. We invite papers that ask how various media constitute human temporality differently and if there are any general propositions or conclusions that can link the investigation of human time with cultural theory.

Friday, March 24

Traumatic Time

Mark Frederick, University of California, Riverside
“Traumatic Time Travel: Chris Marker’s La Jetée”
Rachel Smith, Rutgers University
“Disaster: Time on TV”
Andrew Skomra, SUNY Buffalo
“Great Moments in the History of Indifference”
Sabine Doran, University of California, Riverside
“Sculpting Human Time: The Corporeality of the Dead in Tarkovsky and Greenaway”

Saturday, March 25

Visual Time

Nevenka Stankovic, University of British Columbia
“Memory to come: Sokurov’s Film, The Russian Ark as Archive Fever”
Tevis Thompson, University of Iowa
“Just in Time”: Mediating Real-Time Narrative — Erotics, Intimacy, Contingency
Liyan Shen, Indiana University
“Making Use of Time: Seasons in the Ming Gardens”
Scott Sherer, Kent State University
“‘They took the wood and left some words’: Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed after 35 Years”

Sunday, March 26

Human Time in Architecture, Art and, Literature

Stephanie Glaser, University of Copenhagen
“Romantic Temporalities: Social Time and Gothic Architecture”
Kelley Wagers, SUNY Buffalo
“Being Historical: Modernist Portraiture and Historiographic Renovations”
Epp Annus, Estonian Literature Museum
“Care, Togetherness and Time: Michel Tournier’s Friday”