Main description:

Regardless of field, from the art world to healthcare delivery, there is a growing need for practically useful theory and theoretically informed practice. The time is ripe for a collaborative, creative conversation among thinkers and doers who are concerned about the larger world and our role in it. Making Sense: Beauty, Creativity, and Healing is a collection of essays and creative expressions written and produced in relation to a colloquium that tried to address these matters at the Whitney Humanities Center of Yale University. Beginning with a powerful essay on the individually and globally therapeutic qualities of art and beauty by Elaine Scarry of Harvard University, this volume brings together a diversity of theoretically minded scholars, scientists, artists, and healers. In the form of critical and reflective essays, alongside images, poetry, and fiction, this book allows the reader to experience the bursts of ideas and sensory triggers that respond to and extend the artistic installations and performances of the colloquium - and welcomes the reader into the conversation.

Contents:

Contents: Elaine Scarry: Beauty and the Pact of Aliveness - Katy Martin/Linda Cummings: Beauty, Longing, and Fear - Kate St. Amand: Thoughts on the Colloquium on Beauty - Leon Golub: Extraterrestrial Beauty: Science of the Sun - Frank O'Cain: Moon Poems - Elaheh Kheirandish/Hormoz Goodarzy: From the 'Full Moon' to the 'Subservient Sun': Expressions of Beauty and Creativity in Persian Poetry and Calligraphy - Florian Forestier: Beauty and the Experience of Creation - Richard Kearney: Writing Trauma: Narrative Catharsis in Homer, Shakespeare, and Joyce - Anne Bernard Kearney/Simone Kearney: The Power of Art - Kofi George: From the Battlefield - Yoo Sung Lee/Xena Lee: The Beauty of Hangeul Calligraphy - Anne Davenport: A Vocation for Light - Frank O'Cain: A Day Before Painting - Janice Perry: Making Sense of Making Sense: Healing Hands - Rosalyn Cama: Art and Beauty - Stephen Kellert: Nature as a Source for Human Healing - Brandon Cuffy: Neural Proxies: Designing Environments that Can Heal - Gabriele Sofia: Theater, Creativity, and Therapy - Lorna Collins: On Jean Fremiot and His Photographic Work with Adolescents - Sunny Schwartz: Creativity and Innovation in the Fight to Restore Justice to All - Ruth Morgan: Socially Engaged Art and the Mechanics of Civic Life - Sean Kernan: Early Childhood for Adults: Ways Back to Creativity, Beauty, and Possibly Healing - Evie Lindemann: Mandalas as Spiritual Medicine.