Conference: Research at the Interface of the Life Sciences with the Arts, to be held in Washington, DC - December, 2010

University Of Montana, Missoula MT

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides funding to organize a conference on "Research at the Interface of the Life Sciences with the Arts." The PIs will assemble a two-day conference to explore the potential for research and scholarly interaction of science (especially the life sciences) with the arts and the humanities. The conference will be held in Washington, D.C., with the expected co-sponsorship by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The Conference will bring together approximately 25 participants, who will discuss the implications of their work, and/or form collaborations between and amongst themselves, in order to tackle problems in which both the scientific and the arts/humanities expertise are brought to bear on important public issues. Examples of potential discussion topics include how authors engage a person's attentional circuitry and mimic memory; how dancers explore methods by which body movements can be used to demonstrate and investigate concepts of neurobiology, etc. This Conference will bring seemingly disparate disciplines together to find some commonalities and complementarities, in hopes of advancing both fields. Both biology and arts/humanities experts are expected to participate, with a focus on intellectual, and gender and ethnic, diversity. The PIs, one coming from neuroscience and the other from arts/humanities, will identify and select individuals to create the right balance in order to increase the likelihood for productive discussions. The PIs hope that stimulating dialogues would lead to a broader array of tools that both artists/humanists and scientists could use. A likely outcome of this discourse is the use of visual and performing arts and humanities in communicating science to the public. For more information, please contact Dr. Chris Comer at christopher.comer@umontana.edu, or Dr. Ellen McCulluch-Lovell at emlovell@marlboro.edu.