IAFOR > The Paris Conference on Arts and Humanities (PCAH) > PCAH2023 > Programme

Programme

Speakers at The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities (PCAH) will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. This page provides details of presentations and other programming. For more information about presenters, please visit the Speakers page.

Friday, June 16 to Sunday, June 18 will be held at the Maison de la Chimie, Paris, France. Monday, June 19 will be held online.

Conference Outline

Friday, June 16, 2023Saturday, June 17, 2023Sunday, June 18, 2023Monday, June 19, 2023

Location: Maison de la Chimie

14:30-15:00: Conference Registration

15:00-15:15: Welcome Address & Recognition of IAFOR Scholarship Winners

15:15-16:00: Keynote Presentation

16:00-16:30: Panel Presentation

16:30-17:00: Extended Coffee Break

17:00-17:45: Panel Presentation

17:45-18:00: Conference Photograph

18:00-19:00: Welcome Reception & Conference Poster Session

All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Location: Maison de la Chimie

09:00-10:40: Onsite Parallel Session 1

10:40-10:55: Coffee Break

10:55-12:10: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:10-13:10: Lunch Break

13:10-14:00: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:00-14:15: Coffee Break

14:15-15:55: Onsite Parallel Session 4

15:55-16:10: Coffee Break

16:10-17:50: Onsite Parallel Session 5

18:00-21:00: Conference Dinner

All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Location: Maison de la Chimie

09:00-10:40: Onsite Parallel Session 1

10:40-10:55: Coffee Break

10:55-12:10: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:10-13:10: Lunch Break

13:10-14:00: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:00-14:15: Coffee Break

14:15-15:55: Onsite Parallel Session 4

15:55-16:05: Closing Session

All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Location: Online

10:05-10:20: Online Conference Opening Address

10:20-12:00: Live-Stream Presentation Session 1

12:00-12:10: Break

12:10-13:25: Live-Stream Presentation Session 2

13:25-13:35: Break

13:35-14:50: Live-Stream Presentation Session 3

14:50-15:00: Break

15:00-16:40: Live-Stream Presentation Session 4

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Featured Presentations

  • There Is No New Normal
    There Is No New Normal
    Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

Conference Programme

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on May 12, 2023. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

Important Information Emails

All registered attendees will receive an Important Information email and updates in the run-up to the conference. Please check your email inbox for something from "iafor.org". If you can not find these emails in your normal inbox, it is worth checking in your spam or junk mail folders as many programs filter out emails this way. If these did end up in one of these folders, please add the address to your acceptable senders' folder by whatever method your email program can do this.

Pre-Recorded Virtual Presentations

A number of presenters have submitted pre-recorded virtual video presentations. We encourage you to watch these presentations and provide feedback through the video comments.

Virtual Video Presentations

Previous Programming

View details of programming for past PCAH conferences via the links below.

PCAH2022
There Is No New Normal
Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

As we emerge from COVID and the requirements we all endured for masking, distancing, and curtailed travel, we have heard regularly that we have now entered a post-COVID "new normal." That term begs the question, of course, of what "old normal" is being referred to and how precisely we have deviated from it. It further obscures the fact that the queer theorist Michael Warner, in The Trouble with Normal from a quarter-century ago, rejected the whole notion of "normality," arguing that as a term, it has been used primarily as a means to assert control by dominant powers - normalising their interests - rather than to capture a widely common or desirable way of being.

So, was there in the years immediately pre-COVID a static and definable "normal" that then evolved radically into a "new" state over just 24 months or so? To put it bluntly, "no." The U.S.-based Pew Research Center has joined others in addressing this topic directly, concluding that our supposed "new normal" is really only an intensification of trends already present well before the pandemic: worsening social inequality, deepening mistrust of authority, science, and fact, and a turn toward authoritarianism as populations reject diversity, inclusion, and demands for social justice. Yes, we may have seen an appreciable uptick in remote work and online delivery of education, but even those simply meant more isolation and less immediate interaction with those unlike ourselves, and therefore worsened all of the social threats just mentioned.

To proclaim a "new normal" is at best a form of wishful thinking that a definitive break has occurred with a past that is viewed most often with nostalgia but at other times with distaste or condescension. It absolves us from reckoning with long-standing injustice and our own culpability in entrenched patterns of violence against the disenfranchised. It allows us to see ourselves and our quotidian lives as having endured something cataclysmic, emerging then phoenix-like, changed irrevocably. If we are living in the "new," then we no longer have to reckon with the "old," including long-standing and continuing crimes against others' selfhoods. The concept of a "new normal," in effect, absolves us of responsibility.

Instead of wasting time by celebrating or reviling a "new normal," we should work instead to document the trends that the pandemic magnified and trace down the intensified threats to civil society and economic security that have arisen because of or in response to the pandemic. This does not hinge on the concept of anything radically "new," rather it posits an incrementalist model of deepening fears of difference and desperate reassertions of old ideologies—a toxic, continuing normalisation of intolerance and indifference. As U.S. politicians wage renewed war on transgender youth and what they deride as "critical race theory" and "woke" culture, the old norms seem very much alive and all too present.