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International conference organized by the ELTE Department of English Studies.The conference aims to explore the limits and crossings between the incommensurable discourses of and on life and its limits in medicine, literature, and philosophy from the Romantic Age to the present. How has “life” been conceptualised, narrated, diagnosed, measured, aestheticised, politicised, and its notion contested across these domains? What happens when biological, philosophical, and literary understandings of life intersect — or fail to translate into one another?
From Enlightenment vitalism and Romantic theories of organism and imagination to modern biopolitics, epidemiology, and posthuman thought, the concept of life has remained both foundational and unstable. Medical science has sought to define and preserve life, philosophy has interrogated its meaning and limits, and literature has explored its experiential, ethical, and narrative dimensions. Yet these discourses often remain partially incompatible, revealing tensions between scientific description, philosophical reflection, and narrative representation.
We invite contributions that explore the limits and crossings between medical, literary, and philosophical discourses of life. We are particularly interested in historically grounded as well as theoretically informed approaches.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
Life, death, and narration
Philosophy and the limits of life
Romantic medicine, science, and literature
Psychiatry, subjectivity, and the medicalization of life
Biopolitics and the politics of health
Race, medicine, empire, and the politics of life
Indigenous medicine and concepts of life
Epidemiology, disease, and narrative
Illness, diagnosis, and representation
Healing, recovery, and the limits of cure
Disability and the production of norms
Ethics of care, ageing, survival, and vulnerability
Artificial life, technology, longevity, and medicine
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Prof. Hanna Meretoja, University of Turku
Prof. Neil Vickers, King’s College London
Dr. Arthur Rose, University of Exeter
Dr. Danielle Spencer, Columbia University
Dr. Eszter Ureczky, University of Debrecen
The conference will take place at the Department of English, Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest, Hungary. There is no registration fee; however, participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
We welcome submissions from scholars from various fields, including, but not limited to literature, philosophy, and cultural studies.
Abstract proposals of 250-300 words should be sent to [email protected], accompanied by a 100-word bionote.
The deadline for abstract submission is 4 September 2026.
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Event venue
ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, Budapest, Hungary
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