On the occasion of Professor Lamarque’s retirement in the summer of 2023, there will be a two-day conference to celebrate his philosophical work. Peter has provided debate-shaping arguments on an extremely wide range of questions, including artistic ontology, the nature of fiction, artistic value, interpretation, criticism, and architectural conservation. He has set the standard for how to combine philosophical vision and argument with illuminating attention to literary works. Many scholars owe many a publication to provocations and insights provided by Peter Lamarque. His influential publications include articles such as ‘How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?’ (BJA, 1981); ‘Tragedy and Moral Value’ (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1995); ‘On Not Expecting Too Much from Narrative’ (Mind and Language, 2004); and ‘Poetry and Abstract Thought’ (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2009). He has published numerous monographs and edited volumes. Truth, Fiction and Literature, co-authored with Stein Haugom Olsen, is the most substantial, deeply developed work in philosophy of literature of the past several decades. His work has won international recognition: he was awarded the 2018 "Premio Internazionale d'Estetica" from the Italian Society of Aesthetics, and his book Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (2011) won the Outstanding Monograph Prize from the American Society for Aesthetics.
Scholars from a range of career stages, including ECRs are invited to connect Peter’s work with their own, to apply it to new areas and to offer the kinds of no-holds-barred criticism to which Peter himself is committed.
The conference is supported by the University of York and by the British Society of Aesthetics. It will take place at the University of York.
Date and Time:Wednesday, 5 July 2023 - 11.00am to 7:15pm (to include a drinks reception 6:15pm - 7:15pm)
Wednesday, 5 July 2023 - Optional Conference Dinner from 7:30pm, From £42 at Heslington Hall, University of York. (If you are joining us for the Conference Dinner, please make sure to secure your place at:
tinyurl.com/PeterLamarqueConferenceDinner)
Thursday, 6 July 2023 - 9:45am to 5:30pm
Location: ENV/005 Department of Environment and Geography, University of York
(campus map)Conference Program:Day 1 - Wednesday 5th July 2023
11.00 - 11.20: Registration - Tea & Coffee on arrival
11.20 - 11.30: Welcome
11.30 - 12.30: Eileen John (Warwick) - Style and Personality in the Philosophical Work
12.30 - 13.00: Andriy Bilenkyy (Toronto) - ‘Between Fictions and Functions: Lamarque and Olsen on Thematic Aboutness’
13.00 - 14.00: Lunch
14.00 - 15.00: David Davies (McGill) - ‘One dogma of (aesthetic) empiricism’
15.00 - 15.30: Emily Williamson (CEU) - ‘Form, Content and Understanding: on the Cognitive Value of Appreciating Art as Art’
15.30 - 16.00: Tea & Coffee
16.00 - 17.00: Iris Vidmar Jovanović (Rijeka) - ‘On Literature and Ethics: Insights from Peter Lamarque’
17.00 - 17.30: Derek Matravers (Open University) - ‘Should there be “a philosophy of fiction”?’
18.15 - 18.45: Drinks reception (Department of Philosophy)
19.15 - 22.00: Conference Dinner (HG/21, Heslington Hall)
Day 2 - Thursday 6th July, 2023
9.45: Arrival
10.00 - 11.00: Filippo Contesi (Barcelona) - ‘Stylistic Appearances and Linguistic Diversity’
11.00 - 11.30: Alice Harberd (UCL) - ‘The Cognitive Value of Literary Themes’
11.30 - 12.00: Tea & Coffee
12.00 - 13.00: Julian Dodd (Leeds) - ‘Not funny any more? Meaning, morality and Woody Allen’s Manhattan'
13.00 - 14.00: Lunch
14.00 - 15.00: Emily Caddick Bourne (Manchester) - 'Opacity, Interpretation and Fictional Worlds’
15.00 - 15.30: Christopher Earley (Warwick) - ‘On Timelessness and Topicality’
15.30 - 15.50: Tea & Coffee
15.50 - 16.50: Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech) - ‘Thinking with Poetry’
16.50 - 17.20: Peter Lamarque - Closing Remarks
17.20 - 17.30: Conference closing remarks and acknowledgements
Conference Organisers: Greg Currie and Eileen John
Conference Assistant: Angelos Sofocleous
(For enquiries: angelos.sofocleous@york.ac.uk)
