Metamorphoses of Time Conference – CfP
Call for Papers
Metamorphoses of Time Conference
Institute of English and American Studies, University of Gdańsk
May 28-30, 2025 / Gdańsk, Poland
Metamorphosis, from Greek metamorphōsis, refers to a change of form or structure, a trans-formation that affects appearance, circumstances, condition, or character. Because metamorphosis is a process, it involves time, which, as Aristotle has it, measures change and is measured by change.
But if all is in flux and there is nothing but change, then time, the agent of change, undergoes metamorphoses as well. This dimension of temporality finds a powerful expression in Ovid’s Metamorphoses:“as water is forced downstream by the water behind it and presses no less on the water ahead, so time is in constant flight and pursuit, continually new. The present turns into the past and the future replaces the present; every moment that passes is new and eternally changing” (Met. 15.181-85). The time-river, moreover, evades linear and static measures. Its flow is not always smooth and regular. Not even its direction remains constant or predictable, since it contains countercurrents and eddies. The river flows, as Serres and Latour put it, “in a turbulent manner and chaotic manner; it percolates. This means precisely that it passes and doesn’t pass” (58). When reflected on, this complexity must make us wonder: How does a present, poised between past and future, allow for both change and stasis? How are we to understand temporal percolations, shifts and turbulences? How do we conceptualize and make sense of the passing of time and of varying time scales? How does time act as an agent of change and how do time-changes affect our actions and endeavors? How can we approach the metamorphoses of time in our scholarly work and teaching practice? These are some of the questions that the conference seeks to explore. We invite papers from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to literature, linguistics, philosophy, film and media studies, art history, theater and visual studies, the environmental humanities.
Possible Topics:
- Cultural, literary and linguistic articulations of time change and temporal experience
- Crisis time and temporal paradoxes of emergency
- Time shapes and timescapes
- Time and speed: dromological perspectives on the contemporary technosphere
- Time and the long perspectives
- De/acceleration: aesthetics and practice of slowness
- Deep time and multiscalar temporalities
- Models of time in different languages
- Language as a time machine
- And others
Please send your abstract and a short biographical blurb (max. 250 words) to studyoftime@ug.edu.pl by December 15, 2024.
Works cited:
Ovid. (2004). Metamorphoses, trans. Ch. Martin. W.W.Norton.
Serres, M., & Latour, B. (1995). Conversations on science, culture, and time. University of Michigan Press.