About JPS 2006: Art and Human Development

Constance Milbrath & Cynthia Lightfoot , Organizers

June 1–3, 2006, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

This year’s meeting, Art and Human Development, will explore themes of creativity, invention, and the world of the imagination. Contributors to the invited program will challenge realist epistemologies that view the products and processes of imagination as exotic departures from development’s more serious course of adaptation and acquisition of “objective” knowledge. Instead, they will advance the argument that understanding human development may be furthered through an analysis of creative activities such as stories, paintings, music and myths. In addition, they will suggest that interpretive perspectives common to the disciplines of history, art, and literary criticism, can provide appropriate source-models for the developmental sciences.

Plenary speakers will include Murray Forman (Northeastern University), Norman Freeman (University of Bristol), Carol Lee (Northwestern), David Lewis-Williams (University of Witwatersrand), and Ellen Winner (Boston College). The program will also feature a special evening panel of artists and a seminar on Piaget’s, Possibility and Necessity: Volume 1, The role of possibility in cognitive development.