9th Global Conference
Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness

Monday 10th March - Thursday 13th March 2008
Salzburg, Austria

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to examine and explore issues surrounding evil and human wickedness. Perspectives are sought from those engaged in the fields of anthropology, criminology, cultural studies, legal studies, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology. Perspectives are sought from those working in the caring professions, the media, prison services, politics, psychiatry and other work-related and vocational areas.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes;

• the concept and language of ‘evil’ and ‘wickedness’
• the nature and sources of evil and human wickedness
• moral intuitions about dreadful crimes
• psychopathic behaviour - mad or bad?
• choice, responsibility, and diminished responsibility
• social and cultural reactions to evil and human wickedness
• the portrayal of evil and human wickedness in the media and popular culture
• suffering in literature and film
• individual acts of evil, group violence, holocaust and genocide; obligations of bystanders
• terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing; the evils of terrorism, fear of terrorism, international relations especially with regard to the modern nation state, superpower interventionist strategies, post-war reorganisation following the evils of war
• the search for meaning and sense in evil and human wickedness
• the nature and tasks of theodicy
• religious understandings of evil and human wickedness
• postmodern approaches to evil and human wickedness
• ecocriticism, evil and suffering
• gender and evil
• evil and the use/abuse of technology; evil in cyberspace

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 9th November 2007. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd February 2008.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for inclusion in an ISBN eBook. In addition, selected papers accepted for and presented at this conference will also be published in a themed volume.

The conference is part of a larger series of ongoing conferences, run under the general banner ‘At the Interface’. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

© Wickedness.Net 2008