Image: 'Scene from a Novella'. by Liberale da Verona, ca. 1445–1527. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Date: 2-4 June 2015
Venue: Macmahon Ball Theatre Old Arts, The University of Melbourne
Convenor: Professor Stephanie Trigg, The University of Melbourne
Confirmed speakers:
Professor James Simpson, Harvard University
Professor Conrad Rudolph, University of California, Riverside
Professor Jennifer Wawrzinek, Freie Universität Berlin
Download program
The face is one of the most intense sites for the expression and communication of emotion. That intensity generates millions of representations of the face, in a range of textual, dramatic, visual, cinematic and material forms. This collaboratory will bring together research on representations of the expressive face, from the medieval to the modern world, from illumination and early print culture through to contemporary graphic novels, non-fiction and cinema. Speakers will consider how images of the face make meaning and communicate emotion, and will focus particularly on the question of facial hermeneutics: how do we read and interpret faces, whether they appear to us in visual, textual or cinematic form? The collaboratory will also consider the relation between the human and the non-human, with particular focus on the animal face, the monstrous or demonic face, and the machine face.
Watch the lectures
CHE aims to make valuable intellectual work publicly accessible. In that spirit, please enjoy recordings of the papers presented at the Reading The Face Collaboratory. Many thanks to the participants, who have graciously shared their work.
Tuesday 2 June
Grace Moore "Charles Dickens’s 'Facial Pantomimes'"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Jane Davidson "Exploring the Pianist’s Face"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Keynote Adress and Public Lecture
Conrad Rudolph (UC Riverside) "Faces, Art, and Computerised Evaluation Systems"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Wednesday 3 June
Keynote Adress
Jennifer Warwzinek "Facing the Eighteenth-Century Animal: From Swift's Yahoos to Shelley's Frankenstein"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Melbourne Portrait Group
Alison Inglis "Frederick Sandys’ Image of Proud Maisie: Poetry, Portraiture and Passion"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Melbourne Portrait Group
Mark Shepheard "Faces, Friendship, and Formality: Emotion and the Court Portraiture of Anton Raphael Mengs"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Melbourne Portrait Group
Vivien Gaston "'She’s warm! She lives!': Visualising the Text in Johann Zoffany’s Portrait of Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in Shakespeare's 'A Winter’s Tale', c. 1780"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Anne Maxwell "Lavater and the Nineteenth-Century Photographic Portrait"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Kathryn Woods "Facing Character in a Faceless Society: Physiognomy, Facial Appearance and Character in Britain 1650-1780"
Free live streaming by Ustream
Stephanie Downes "Textual Expressions: Reading Faces in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts" Part 1
Live broadcast by Ustream
Stephanie Downes "Textual Expressions: Reading Faces in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts" Part 2
Live broadcast by Ustream
Stephanie Trigg "The Mutable Face of Fortune in Medieval Art and Literature"
Live broadcast by Ustream
Thursday 4 June
Lisa Beaven "Fear, Fury and the Face: Emotion and the 'Affetti' in the Work of Nicholas Poussin"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
Heather Gaunt "Rationality versus Emotion: The Visual Arts in Health Education at the University of Melbourne"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
Elizabeth MacFarlane "Graphic Medicine: Doctors Reading Faces"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
Sarah Richardson "The Face as a Site of Reclaimed Power in the Work of Phoebe Gloeckner"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
James Simpson "Textual Face"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
Bindi Cole Chocka "We All Need Forgiveness"
Broadcasting live with Ustream
