Keynote speaker: Prof. Bogdan Suceavă

California State University, Fullerton, USA

Time and location: Saturday, 18 May 2019, 11.00-12.30
Faculty of Letters, III.11 Room, Building A, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași

Language: Romanian

In 1872, the 23-year old Felix Klein published an important work, known today as the Erlangen Program, with lasting impact on the development of modern mathematics. Pursuing the Erlangen’s Program philosophy, a doctoral student of Gaston Darboux, Gheorghe Țițeica, introduced the first concepts of affine differential geometry in a series of papers published in 1907-1908. Furthermore, while running the ‘Mathematical Gazette’s problem solving competition, Țițeica discovered Dan Barbilian, a young brilliant and original mathematician who later had many substantive contributions in algebraic geometry and metric geometry. In poetry, Barbilian is remembered for his volume titled ‘Secondary Game’. In an essay wrote a decade after the ‘Secondary Game”s publication, Barbilian wrote: “I personally consider myself a representative of the Erlangen Program, that movement of ideas that, from the standpoint of its consequences and the overturn of viewpoints, can be compared with the Discourse on the Method or with the Reform itself. Instead of the narrow specialization or the opaque technicality, which preceded the Erlangen Program, it brought an illuminated eclecticism. It pursues the depth of each theory, without missing from sight the homogeneity and unity of the whole.” Starting our inquiry from this standpoint, we investigate the existence of the common roots of ‘Secondary Game”s poetics and the philosophy of the Erlangen Program. Our conclusion is that the Erlangen Program yielded in the field of Romanian letters a totally unexpected outcome: an aesthetic vision.

Bogdan SUCEAVA (b. 1969) has a degree in mathematics (1994) and a M.Sc in geometry (1995) from the University of Bucharest, and a doctorate in mathematics from Michigan State University, East Lansing (2002). He is now a full professor of mathematics at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught since 2002. He has written articles on mathematics and the history of mathematics, some of which appeared in Historia Mathematica, the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Intelligencer, among many others; two of historical essays are included in the Best Writings on Mathematics anthologies (2016, 2018) published by the Princeton University Press.  He is also the author of 17 literary volumes, including Miruna: A Tale (Curtea Veche, 2007; Polirom 2016), The Night When Somebody Died for You (Polirom, 2010), Coming from an Off key Time (Polirom, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010; 3rd edition, 2014), Avalon. Secrets of Happy Emigrants (Polirom, 2018).

 

For Romanian, please click here.

There is no unitary theory of interdisciplinarity, but we are most certainly crossing a postdisciplinary era, one in which inter-, multi-, transdisciplinarity have already merged into a meta-discipline, a new idiom where all these prefixes are partially interchangeable. But what does the conceptual vocabulary of interdisciplinarity consist of today? Which are its applicative methodologies? How do we acknowledge the potential meeting points of two distinct disciplines? How can these meetings be encouraged? And how does the imperative of being interdisciplinary shape the policies of research and the academic culture?

In order to answer these questions, the 6^th edition of the PHSS Conference will focus on four thematic areas: conceptual vocabulary, epistemologies and methodologies, interferences, forms of collaboration. Theoretical approaches, as well as focused case studies and inter- and transdisciplinary explorations are welcome. Our selection will attempt, as far as possible, to come with a balanced selection of these four areas of interest:

Conceptual vocabulary

• Theories of post-, inter-, multi-, transdisciplinarity
• Operational metaphors of interdisciplinarity: hibridization, contamination, virus,
• From the humanist model of antiquity to transdisciplinarity: key concepts and their historical evolution
• Interdisciplinarity within the Academia: new disciplines and cross-disciplinary research areas

Epistemologies and methodologies

• Models of world representation from an inter- and transdisciplinary perspective: theory of evolution, world-systems theory etc.
• Interdisciplinarity in contemporary literary theory
• Objects of speculative thinking in antiquity: from theology to physics, from ethics to political studies
• Inter- and transdisciplinary methods in social sciences and humanities

Interferences

• Multi- and interdisciplinary research fields: memory studies, trauma studies, gender studies, etc.
• Digital literacy: modes of writing and reading in the digital medium
• Intermediality and intertextuality in literature, film, visual arts and performing arts
• Computational linguistics: instruments and applications of classical linguistics
• Martianus Capella and the system of the seven artes liberales

Forms of cross-collaboration

• Forms of collaboration among science, art and technology
• Interdisciplinarity, knowledge-transfer and cooperation with business and local communities
• Interdisciplinarity in the entrepreneurial environment
• Interdisciplinarity and interculturality

Conference languages: Romanian, English, and French.

There is no participation fee for this year’s edition.

The PHSS 2019 edition is partially supported through the research grants GI-UAIC-2017-01 and GI-UAIC-2017-02, currently implemented at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Department.

We invite researchers in all fields to submit abstracts until 22 April 2019.

 

NEW!

The final program of the PHSS Conference 2018 has been uploaded.

We are looking forward to meeting you in Iasi!