This conference brings together scholars across the humanistic disciplines to explore the question of attention and its significance in art and visual culture from historical and theoretical perspectives: What roles do the various modes of attention play in our experience and understanding of the work of art? How does reflection on this issue contribute to our understanding of the nature of attention as a psychological as well as an ethical phenomenon?

Addressing a broad range of topics from ancient Indian art to contemporary North American poetry, the conference offers a rigorously interdisciplinary approach to studying attention as a fundamental comportment governing our relationship to art.