We are delighted to invite you to the upcoming conference, “On Touching and (E)motion: Intercontinental Encounters.”

Join us for an international and interdisciplinary gathering exploring the creative and critical potential of interactions between the tangible and intangible. This two-day conference will illuminate points of contact between East and West, fostering culturally immersive dialogue across centuries of critical thought and intercultural relations.

In our contemporary moment, as we increasingly live significant portions of our lives in virtual space, questions of touch, materiality, and emotion become ever more pressing. From virtual relationships with AI to the movement of healing practices across continents, this conference brings together scholars from Literature, Philosophy, Art History, Social Sciences, Linguistics, Media Studies, and the Performing Arts.

Event Details:

Date: 2nd–3rd May 2026

Time:
- 2nd May: 14:00–18:50
- 3rd May: 14:00–20:15

Location: National Taiwan University, Taipei (Humanities Hall, B208 & B109) or via Google Meet for online participants.

Language: English

Registration: Please register your in-person attendance by 24th April via this link: https://tinyurl.com/az5vx4a4. Please note that in-person participation is available on a first-come, first-served basis. As for online participants, please find the access code for Google Meet via the programme on our conference website.

For more information, including the full schedule, please visit our website: tinyurl.com/TouchAndEmotion. If you have any inquiries, feel free to contact the conference administrator, Rainliy Yip.

We look forward to welcoming you to the conversation.

Programme:
Saturday, 2 May 2026 (06:00-10:50 GMT/14:00-18:50 Taiwan)

14:00-14:20: Conference Opening - room B208

14:30-15:20: Keynote Speaker - room B208
Grace Euna Kim, transdisciplinary artist, choreographer, critical researcher and pedagogue based in Berlin
Acid Bodies (online)
Chair: Helga Müllneritsch

15:20-15:30: Break

15:30-17:00: Session 1a - room B208
Feeling and Knowing: Emotion, Matter and non-Western Thought
Chair: Alexander Lash

Aditi Basu, Independent Researcher (online)
Representing Emotions in Ancient India: An Analysis of Duhkha through Art in Hinduism

Lewis Ryder, University of Lincoln
Lust, Shame(lessness), Anxiety: The Emotional Politics of British Colonial Loot and Looting

Archishman Biswas, Independent Researcher (online)
Touch and Emotions: Transcultural royal households in India and England

Jenna Niu, Hong Kong Baptist University
Response to the Material Turn: Rethinking Nonhuman Actors in the Zhuangzi

15:30-17:00: Session 1b - room B109
Image, Identity and the Material Trace
Chair: Sophia Yashih Liu

Sandipana Dhar, Independent Researcher (online)
Emotions, Motion, and Touch: Transcultural Elements and the Concept of Touch in Mughal Portraits

Elizaveta Litovskaia, National Taiwan University
Dressed Up for Riot: Dark Academia and the Longing for the Past in the Social Media Era

Danny Wang, National University of Singapore
When Psychedelics Touch Buddhism: Material Spirituality and Ecological Ethics in Allen Ginsberg’s “Wales Visitation”

17:00-17:20: Break

17:20-18:50: Session 2a - room B208
Body, Technology and the Politics of Skin
Chair: Michelle Chen

Sahib Kapoor, Jawaharlal Nehru University (online)
Between Romanticism and Expressionism: A Puppet Affair

Nathasya Josephine, National Taiwan University
Artificial Consciousness: Exploring the Boundaries of Power and Ethics

Annika Hübner, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (online)
Under the Skin - Nietzsche, Embodiment, and Emotional Subjectivation in the Digital Age

Emily Trujillo, Fulbright Austria/University of Vienna (online)
This is ur body on the internet

17:20-18:50: Session 2b - room B109
Skin, Touch, and More-than-Human Intimacies: Transmaterial Encounters Across Species, Languages, and Continents
Chair: Lewis Ryder

Paweł Piszczatowski, University of Warsaw
Quantum Touch and Lingual Skin: Transmaterial Intimacies in the Work of Yōko Tawada and Hubert Matiúwàa

Małgorzata Roeske, Jagiellonian University in Kraków (online)
Touching Illness Across Species: Material-Affective Encounters in the Dying of Companion Animals

Patrycja Pichnicka-Trivedi, University of Warsaw (online)
New Affects and New Relations?: Evolution of the Non-human Representations in the Popular Culture on the example of Disney Animations

Olga Knapik, Jagiellonian University in Kraków (online)
Who are you, Hooman? What do we know about non-human primates’ perception of human identity?

18:50-: Conference Dinner (By Invitation Only)

Sunday, 3 May 2026
06:00-12:15 GMT/14:00-20:15 Taiwan

14:00-14:50:
Keynote Speaker - room B208
Laia Manonelles, Lecturer in Art History, Universitat de Barcelona
Own Languages: Transnational Dialogues Through Creative Practice (online)
Chair: Eva Bru-Domínguez (online)

14:50-15:15: Break

15:15-16:45: Session 3a - room B208
War, Prosthetics, and the Posthuman Body in Literature
Chair: Manuel Herrero-Puertas

Konstantin Schmidtbauer, Sapienza University of Rome (online)
Touching Words: Franz Janowitz, War, and Posthuman Intimacy from Trench Landscapes to Her

Julia Jung Yun Chen, National Taiwan University
From Prosthesis to Personhood: Klara’s Subjectivity and the Critique of Ableist Logic in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Chen Cheng-Fen, National Chengchi University
Touch, Motion, and Material Forces: A New Materialist Reading of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

15:15-16:45: Session 3b - room B109
Writing, Gesture, and the Matter of Meaning
Chair: Paweł Piszczatowski

Alina Sabransky, University of Cologne (online)
Writing Matter(s) – New Materialist Reconfigurations of Knowledge, Bodies and Worlds

Rosalind Holgate Smith, Middlesex - Minzu University
A Vocabulary of Touch

Lars Amann, University of Stuttgart (online)
The Touch of Thought: How Gesture Becomes Meaning in the Works of Twombly and Federici

Alexander Waszynski, University of Greifswald
Erasing the Boundaries of Corporeality: Vicki Baum and Mary Wigman on Dance, Touch, and Space

16:45-17:00: Break

17:00-18:30: Session 4a - room B208
Mourning, Memory, and the Materiality of Writing
Chair: Laurent Cases

Theresa Gutmann, University of Bonn
The Book as Body — Mourning and Materiality in Anne Carson’s ‘Nox’

Anastasiia Gorbunova, Chulalongkorn University / Ural Federal University
Traces of autobiographism in Alexander Herzen’s handwriting: an analysis of the writer’s diaries

Monika Leipelt Tsai, National Chengchi University
Layered histories of emotions and experience in select contemporary German-language collages

Charlotte Rathjen, Leipzig University
The Untouched Body? How Longevity Culture Reconfigures Our Relationship to the Self and the Body through Literature

17:00-18:30: Session 4b - room B109
Perception, Crisis, and Therapeutic Touch
Chair: Helga Müllneritsch

He Pei-rong, National Sun Yat Sen University (present) & Hxu Heng Louie He, China Medical University (online)
The Collapse of Touch and Sight: False Perception and the Making of Falsity

Michelle Chen, Chung Yuan Christian University
Crisis Communication: Evaluation on an AI-assisted Emergency Response Model in a Local Hospital

Christos Sideras, University College London (online)
Being in touch: body psychotherapy and psychoanalytic perspectives

Yannick Leon Winkelmann, Kyushu University
Rehabilitating Wilhelm Heinse: Sensualist Epistemology and Autonomy in the Late Enlightenment

18:30-18:45: Break

18:45-20:15: Session 5a - room B208
Artificial Intimacy, Virtual Love, and Digital Literacy
Chair: Lilith Acadia

Menaka Arasu, National University of Singapore
You Should be Grateful: Parental Anxiety in Narratives of AI Sentience

Liubov Mashtakova, National Chengchi University
The virtual love in literature and culture throughout history: romanticism, modernism, and the present day

Lanni Tsai, National Taiwan University of Science & Technology & Jörg-Alexander Parchwitz, Soochow University
Touching & E-Motion – Multimodal Literacy and Digital Multimodal Composing

18:45-20:15: Session 5b - room B109
Diaspora, Environment, and Collective Feeling
Chair: Wolfgang Odendahl

Felicia Cucuta, Independent Researcher (online)
Moving and being moved: Diasporic (e)motion and care in contemporary Asian diasporic theatre

Feng Chi, National Sun Yat Sen University
The Dinner Project: A Socially Engaged Practice Experiment towards the Revaluation of Values

Kera Lovell, University of Utah (online)
Feeling the Park: Emotional Objects and Collective Memory in Radical Environmental Protest

20:30-: Optional Visit to Taipei’s Night Market