About Us

The Affect and Emotions Workshop is an interdisciplinary community of scholars at all stages of their career at the University of Chicago. The workshop was founded in 2019 to foster conversation among researchers in the humanities and social sciences whose work focuses on the phenomenon of emotional life.

We feature work by doctoral students, faculty, and postdoctoral fellows from across the University, as well as a few guest speakers per year. Our aim is to offer an informal but committed environment for exploring the diverse questions that drive research on the emotions in multiple fields of knowledge production: What are affects and emotions? Have we always felt the same? How do cultural discourses shape our understanding of the emotions, and how do feelings make a nation? Are emotions rational? What does it mean to be happy?

Our Meetings

The Affect and Emotions Workshop meets on alternate Mondays between 4:30 and 6pm, unless otherwise noted. You can find our schedule here. Materials for each session are available on the website with a password and distributed to our mailing list one week before the session. Light refreshments are served.

The workshop is open to the public, and we are committed to making our sessions accessible to all persons. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us.

Presenting Your Work at the Workshop

The workshop’s general call for submissions occurs each summer, and has now closed for the 2021-2022 academic year. Nevertheless, the workshop will continue to consider submissions on a rolling basis, particularly from UChicago PhD students. If you have work in progress that you would like to present for discussion and feedback at a different time of the year, please let us know.

Keeping in Touch

You can sign up for updates on our news and events here. Any questions, concerns or inquiries may be directed to the coordinators by email.

People

Gasira Timir, Department of English  // Coordinator
R.L. Willis, Department of English  // Coordinator

Benjamin A. Saltzman, Associate Professor, Department of English // Faculty Sponsor
Kris Trujillo, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, The Divinity School, and The College // Faculty Sponsor

Past Coordinators: Michal Zechariah (2019-2020), Alex Jania (2020-2021), Jane Gordon (2020-2022), Bellamy Mitchell (2021-2023)