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Centre for the History of Medicine and DiseaseDurham University, UKThis  conference will discuss the history of the relationship between  aesthetics and medical understandings of the body. Today's vogue for  neurological accounts of artistic emotions has a long pedigree. Since  G.S. Rousseau's pioneering work underlined the importance of models of  the nervous system in eighteenth-century aesthetics, the examination of  physiological explanations in aesthetics has become a highly productive  field of interdisciplinary research. Drawing on this background, the  conference aims to illuminate the influence that different medical  models of physiology and the nervous system have had on theories of  aesthetic experience. How have aesthetic concepts (for instance,  imagination or genius) be grounded medically? What effect did the shift  from animal spirits to modern neurophysiology have on aesthetics?For more information, click here.