Where's your head at? Cultural critics, philosophers, and scientists have often sought to explain human intelligence and the emotions. Theorists have offered provisional definitions of such basic emotions as shame and love; scientists and philosophers have offered new theories to explain or "map" thought and feeling in the brain, often through evolutionary models. In all of this work, the brain is either included in a wider cultural imaginary or contrasted with it.
For the 12th Annual Cultural Studies Symposium at Kansas State University, we invite papers that consider how intelligence, reason, and/or emotion have been located within a cultural imaginary. Specifically, how have these capacities been located in brains or some other material object (such as the humours, or computers)? How have brains themselves become cultural representations of these capacities, and more? Papers of any disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and historical periods are welcome, as well as unconventional formats or methods.
