ACADEMIC SYMPOSIA

ART & THE BRAIN
Sept. 9, 2006 Session Information:

Location & RegistrationScheduleSpeakersAbstracts
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ART & THE BRAIN
April 17-18, 2007 Session Information:

Location & RegistrationScheduleSpeakersAbstractsHotel Information
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THE PHILLIPS
FIRST BOOK PRIZE

CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

Art & The Brain

April 17 - 18, 2007 Session
Speaker Information

PRADEEP DHILLON

Pradeep Dhillon is an Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research straddles philosophy of language (both Analytic and Continental), philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and international education. She has published two books and several papers in philosophy of education, more recently in neuroscience and aesthetics. Currently, Dhillon is completing the manuscript, Kant: Educating Judgment for Continuum Press and has a book on aesthetics and semantics under contract with MIT Press. She is Editor for the Journal for Aesthetic Education. Dhillon received her Ph.D from Stanford University in 1991.


NARENDRA AHUJA

Narendra Ahuja is Donald Biggar Willet Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute Artificial Intelligence Group. His fields of professional interest are next generation cameras, 3D computer vision, video analysis, image analysis, pattern recognition, human computer interaction, image processing, image synthesis, and robotics.



NICOLAS J. BULLOT

Nicolas J. Bullot is Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy of Psychology at the University of Toronto (Canada). His Ph.D. thesis studied philosophical and psychological aspects of the perception of objects. He pursued his doctoral research at the Institut Jean Nicod (EHESS, Paris, France) and the Laboratoire de Physiologie de la Perception et de l’Action (Collège de France, CNRS). He was awarded a Fulbright grant for the year 2002-2003 to study at the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (Rutgers University, USA) and a Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research in the Philosophy of Psychology at the University of British Columbia (Canada). His interdisciplinary projects investigate how cognitive agents keep track of individual objects or agents in perception and thought, how attention systems contribute to cognitive tracking and reference, and how one can relate art and cognitive faculties. He has co-edited the volume “Art and the Mind” of The Monist (Bullot & Ludwig, 2003) and a series of online conferences on art and cognition on Interdisciplines (Barberousse et al., 2005). His publications can be found on his website at http://www.nicolas-bullot.org/Publi/PubliFrame.html.


NEAL COHEN

Neal Cohen is a professor in the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cohen is also a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute Cognitive Neuroscience Group at the University of Illinois, as well as a Senior Research Scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. His field of professional interest is cognitive neuroscience, directed specifically at issues about memory systems of the brain, and about amnesia and other disorders of memory.



GREGORY CURRIE

Gregory Currie is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts, University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). His research focuses on philosophy of mind and aesthetics. His most recent book is Arts and Minds (Oxford, 2005) and his current project is on irony and point of view in the arts. He is an editor of the journal Mind and Language; was a Past Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford; and has held visiting positions at Clare Hall, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the Institute of Advanced Study, Australian National University, the University of Maryland, and the University of St. Andrews.



NANCY KANWISHER

Nancy Kanwisher is the Ellen Swallow Richard Professor in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She received her B.S. in 1980 and her PhD in 1986, both from MIT. After teaching for several years at UCLA and then at Harvard, she returned to MIT in 1997. Kanwisher's research concerns the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying visual experience, using behavioral methods, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Her lab has contributed to the identification and characterization of four regions in the human brain involved in visually perceiving faces, places, bodies, and objects. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in Peace and International Security in 1986, a Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1999, and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow teaching Award from MIT in 2002. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.


JENEFER ROBINSON

Jenefer Robinson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati and Vice-President of the American Society for Aesthetics. She is the author of articles on emotion and on various topics in Aesthetics (e.g. representation, expression, and style in the arts), and the editor of Music and Meaning (Cornell University Press, 1997). Her recent book, Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art (Oxford University Press, 2005), first presents a theory of emotion based on current psychological and neuroscientific data and then applies this theory to various issues in the arts, such as the importance of emotional experience in our understanding of a literary work, how form guides and manages our emotional responses to literature, what emotional expression is, how emotions get expressed in various art forms, and how music both expresses emotions and arouses emotion in its listeners.


MIKE ROSS

Mike Ross is Director of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Deeply committed to embracing the art of the past as well as the art of our time across disciplines, aesthetic sensibilities, and cultural legacies, Mike views the Center simultaneously as a potent blending of classroom, laboratory, and public square. Ross holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of the Pacific and master's and doctoral degrees in music composition from the University of Hartford and Columbia University, respectively.

His professional activities include serving on the boards of the American Arts Alliance, Illinois Arts Alliance, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. He also serves on the advisory boards and committees of Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Elise L. Stoeger Awards, Classical Connections (an initiative of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters), and the New York Guitar Festival. He has served as an artist and repertoire advisor for Arabesque Recordings; as a member of the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Advisory Committee, MIT's Artist-in-Residence Program, and Van Cliburn Composers Nominating Committee; and as a panelist and evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Illinois Arts Council, and numerous other organizations. Ross is also currently serving on the Arts Review Committee of the Illinois Capital Development Board and is past co-chair of the Illinois Arts Alliance Statewide Conference Planning Committee. He is very active in the community, serving on a number of community and University advisory committees. He is also a founding board member of 40 North/88 West, the Champaign County Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Council.

SEMIR ZEKI

Semir Zeki is Professor of Neurobiology at the University College, London. He joined the College's teaching staff in 1969 and has been a professor of neurobiology since 1981. He graduated from University College, London in 1964 and earned his Ph.D. in anatomy there in 1967. Zeki specializes in studying the organization of the primate visual brain and, more recently, in studying the relationship between brain activity and artistic appreciation and creativity. He is the author of A Vision of the Brain (Blackwell Publishing, 1993), Inner Vision: an Exploration of Art and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 1999), La Quête de l'essentiel (co-authored with Balthus, Count Klossowski de Rola), (Les Belles Lettres, 1995).

Zeki's honors include the Minerva Foundation Prize (1985; California), Rank Prize in Opto-Electronics (1992), Prix Science pour l'Art (1991; Paris), Zotterman Prize from the Swedish Physiological Society (1993), Betty and David Koetser Prize (1997; Zurich), Electronic Imaging Award from the International Society for Optical Engineering (2001), and the King Faisal International Prize in Science (2004), among others.

Zeki is a trustee of the Minerva Foundation, Berkeley, California (1995 - present), a member of the Committee of Honour, Paris Decorative and Fine Arts Society (1993 - present), and was previously a member of the National Science Council of France (1998-2002).