<nettime-ann> Phobia: Constructing the Phenomenology of Chronic Fear, 1789 to the Present

["Vike Plock" <plockvm@Cardiff.ac.uk>]

.
Phobia: Constructing the Phenomenology of Chronic Fear, 1789 to the Present

An international conference hosted by the Glamorgan Research Centre for Literature, Arts and
Science

8-9 May, 2009

The ATRiuM Campus, Cardiff

Keynote Speakers: Laura Otis (Emory University) and Andrew Thacker (De Montfort University)

The history of phobias as disease entities is intimately connected to the phenomenology of
modernity. Whereas the emergence of spatial phobias such as agoraphobia (Carl Otto Westphal, 1871)
and claustrophobia (Benjamin Ball, 1879) coincided with growing urbanisation and the development of
the modern metropolis, Sigmund Freud’s modern subject theory situated phobia at the heart of his
psychoanalytical practice (‘Little Hans’, Totem and Taboo, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety).
The fin de siècle was rife with cultural and social fears about the present and the future, and the
twentieth century-with its two global conflicts, its natural disasters and the threat of
terrorism-has ushered in a period of postmodern panic. Fear and anxiety are omnipresent in the
modern age. But when, how and why does fear become chronic, morbid or abnormal? And in what ways has
fear been conceptualised by medical practitioners, cultural theorists and artists? 

This interdisciplinary conference looks at the different ways in which writers, artists,
historians, art historians, cultural and human geographers, scientists and medical practitioners
have constructed, represented and theorised phobia and chronic fear. 

We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of phobias and anxiety disorders in the period from
1789 to the present. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome. Topics may include but are not
limited to: 

●	spatial phobias
●	biophobias
●	social phobias
●	phobia and the Gothic
●	the fin de siècle
●	phobia, modernisation and modernity
●	phobia and psychoanalysis
●	phobia and cultural geography
●	fear of science and technology
●	phobia, the senses and physical sensations
●	phobophobia

Please send paper proposals of 300 words to Dr Vike Martina Plock and Dr Martin Willis at
rclas@glam.ac.uk by 19 December 2008. Proposals for panels (comprising three speakers) are also
welcome-please submit the title and a brief description of the panel as well as abstracts for the
individual papers. A selection of conference papers will be published in a special ‘Phobia’
issue of The Journal of Literature and Science. 


-----------------------
Dr Vike Martina Plock
Lecturer in English Literature
Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy
Cardiff University
Cardiff CF10 3EU

Telephone: 02920 874244
Email: plockvm@cardiff.ac.uk
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