The Art of Being Human:
Friendship, Humour, Music, and Death
An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference
Saturday 7th March 2020 – Sunday 8th March 2020
Prague, Czech Republic
FINAL CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Saturday 7th March 2020
08:15 – 08:45 Registration
08:45 – 09:15 Welcome, Opening Words & Expectations: Seán Moran
09:15 – 10:30 Session 1: Humans: Kind, Funny … and Cruel
Chair: Janette E. McDonald
Forgiveness and Goodness: An Intertextual Reading of Shakespeare and Nietzsche
Anthony Barron Carlow College, Ireland
Marginalised: Comparative Depictions of Irish and Muslim Groups in Satirical Caricatures
Eleanor Parkin-Coates
Why are Representations of Leg Amputees Funny?: Considering Newspaper Cartoons of culs-de-jatte in Nineteenth-Century France Alexandra Courtois de Viçose
10:30 – 11:00 Tea/Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 Session 2: Architecture, Humour and Loss
Chair: Elena Nistor
Towards a Humorous Architecture: Revisiting Irony in Learning from Las Vegas
Katerina Zacharopoulou
Kant and Dancing House: The Body, Incongruity, Oscillation, and Why the Building is and is Not Funny
Shawn R. Tucker
The Architecture of Loss: Responding to, and Coping with, Death Through Interdisciplinary Devised Performance in Music, Dance, and Theatre
Noah Lelek, Ilana Morgan, Michael Cleveland, and Long Ho
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:30 Session 3 Friendship and Contemporary Communication
Chair: Anthony Barron
The Spirit of Friendship: From the Buddha through Facebook
Janette E. McDonald
Notes on a Feminist Posthuman Friendship: a Possible Methodology for Academic Encounters
Chiara Montalti
The Third Wheel Theme: Constructing Social and Political Perceptions Through Messages About Friendships and Jealousy in Children’s Global Media Content
Shlomit Feldman
15:30 -16:00 Tea/Coffee
16:00 – 17:00 Life, Death and Coping Chair: Haiyan Lee
Life After Death: Commemorative Perspectives on a Musician’s Death in Ukraine and the USA
Anton Mudrak and Halyna Herasym
Coping with the Stages of Death: a Personal Memoir and Musical Reflection
Dolores Mildred Batten
17:00 – 17:30 End of Day 1: Consolidation, Discussion, Notices
17:30 Wine and Drinks Reception
Sunday 8th March 2020
8:40 – 10:30 Session 5: Friendship in Literature and in Nature
Chair: Lark McIvor
C. S. Lewis and Ciceronian Friendship
David Summers
A Very Short Genealogy of the Pure Relationship in Chinese Literature
Haiyan Lee
Can You Tell Me? On Knowledge and Friendship in Literature and Research
Claus Emmeche
The Value of Animal Friendships
Kelly Jorgenson, Red Deer, Alberta, Canada Andrea M. Karkowski, Bexley, Ohio, USA
10:30 – 11:00 Tea/Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 Session 6: Inspiration from Expiration
Chair: Shlomit Feldman
The Sounds of Silence: The Musical Articulation of Death
Paul Lumsden
Remember Me, in Your Stories and in Your Songs”: Irish Celticism as Cultural Remembrance in Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea
Lark McIvor
‘A modest requiem for Leli’: Playing Music to the Thoughts of a Dying Man
Immanuel Mifsud
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:30 Session 7: Humour in the Arts and Literature
Chair: Dolores Mildred Batten
‘I am what I am’: Trumpian Rhetoric in Rob Sears’ The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump (2017)
Elena Nistor
What It Means to Be Horse: The Cosmic Horror, and Humour, of Gulliver’s Travels
Matthew Risling
Clumsy Debussy
Benjamin Lassauzet
15:30 – 16:00 Tea/Coffee
16:00 – 17:30 Session 8: Comedy Performed
Chair: Shawn R. Tucker
Comedy Collides with the Courtroom
Rachel DiCioccio and Laura E. Little
Finding Alternatives in Liminal Stand-up
Neha Pande
Laughter in Clown Training: Searching in Silences
Klara van Wyk
17:30 – 18:00 Project Development, Closing Thoughts, Photographs and Goodbyes