February 21st || David Cantor-Echols on “Fear and Loathing in Late Medieval Iberia”
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop, remotely, on
Monday, February 21
when
David Cantor-Echols
Social Sciences Teaching Fellow
presents his paper:
“Fear and Loathing in Late Medieval Iberia”
Discussant: Sarah McDaniel, PhD Candidate in the Department of English
the event will take place on Zoom at
4:30-6:00pm CT
This paper examines the function of emotions (namely fear) in the royal-aristocratic bond so foundational to medieval European politics. In an effort to understand why different actors within a elite, homosocial political environment theorized and articulated fear in the ways they did, the paper asks whether the emotion’s expression should be understood as a strategic utterance intended to defuse temporary crises, or whether it was a constitutive feature of its political and institutional context.
Note: The image depicts the assassination of Pedro I of Castile by his half-brother and successor Enrique, both sons of Alfonso XI. The image comes from a late 14th c. edition of the Grandes Chroniques de France (Ms. BnF Français 2813).
Protected: Materials for January 31st Session
January 31st || Alysia Mann Carey on Black Diasporic Politics and Collective Intimacy: Towards a Theory of State Violence as Intimate
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop, remotely, on
Monday, January 31st
when
Alysia Mann Carey
PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science
presents her paper:
Black Diasporic Politics and Collective Intimacy: Towards a Theory of State Violence as Intimate
Discussant: Michaela Machicote, PhD Candidate in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin
the event will take place on Zoom at
4:30-6:00pm CT
The chapter ethnographically examines Black women’s experiences of police violence through the lens of intimacy. This chapter’s central claim is that policing perpetrates a type of intimate violence.
Protected: Materials for November 15th Session
November 15th | Eos Trinidad on “The Irony of Accountability: How a Performance-Inducing Policy Reduces Motivation to Perform”
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop
in-person in Social Sciences Room 302
Monday, November 15th
when
Eos Trinidad
PhD Student, Sociology and Comparative Human Development
presents his paper
“The Irony of Accountability: How a Performance-Inducing Policy Reduces Motivation to Perform”
While researchers have interrogated testing and school accountability’s potentially harmful impacts on teacher behavior, cheating, and stress as well as student outcomes, we know less about how accountability predicts students’ wellbeing, emotion, and motivation. This manuscript explores how accountability could impact students’ motivation to perform and subjective wellbeing, finding important consequences for emotions related to performance but not for social wellbeing or life satisfaction. This research has implications for the quantitative study of emotions, the deeper understanding of school policies, and the potential harms of data-driven programs.
The paper is available on our website, under posts.
Materials for November 8th Session
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop, remotely, on
Monday, November 8th when
Isabel Lachenauer
PhD Candidate, Ottoman and Turkish Studies, NELC
presents her paper:
“Through the Looking Glass: Mirror Characters as Windows into the Emotional Community ofʿĀrifʿAlī”
Discussant: Jane Gordon, PhD Student, Assyriology, NELC
the event will take place on Zoom at
4:30-6:00pm CT
Her paper is available here: Lachenauer Ch 2
Join Zoom Meeting
https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/92402604067?pwd=Zngxd29UdHF4eDBlMEoweFVzaE9LZz09
Meeting ID: 924 0260 4067
Passcode: mirror
November 8th | Isabel Lachenauer on “Through the Looking Glass: Mirror Characters as Windows into the Emotional Community of ʿĀrifʿAlī”
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop, remotely, on
Monday, November 8th
when
Isabel Lachenauer
PhD Candidate, Ottoman and Turkish Studies, NELC
presents her paper:
“Through the Looking Glass: Mirror Characters as Windows into the Emotional Community ofʿĀrifʿAlī”
Discussant: Jane Gordon, PhD Student, Assyriology, NELC
the event will take place on Zoom at
4:30-6:00pm CT
Description: This second chapter of my dissertation, “Artūḫı Wept: Reading Emotions in ʿĀrif ʿAlī’sDānişmendnāme,” looks at never-before studied poems in the fourteenth-century Old Anatolian Turkish redaction of the popular epicDānişmendnāmeto reveal how its author employed novel and sophisticated literary devices to sway his audience’s emotions in certain ways at “appropriate” times. I argue that the principal way ʿĀrif ʿAlī accomplished this was through mirror characters, literary devices which serve as “go-betweens” between text and audience by demonstrating and appealing to the emotions the audience should be feeling and when. Drawing on the theories of Barbara Rosenwein and Frank Brandsma, I argue that analyzing mirror characters like the warrior Artūḫı bridges author, text, and audience, thus bringing us closer to my project’s aim of illuminating the elusive redactor ʿĀrif ʿAlī’s emotional community.
The paper, to be read in advance, is available on a protected post on our website, with the password “mirror.”
Protected: Materials for October 25th Session
October 25th | Srikanth Reddy on “Wonder, A Syzygy: A Poetics of Wonder in The Iliad, Paradise Lost, and Radi Os”
Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop, online, on
Monday, October 25th when
Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy
Professor, Department of English, University of Chicago
presents his paper:
“Wonder, A Syzygy:
A Poetics of Wonder in The Iliad, Paradise Lost, and Radi Os”
Discussant: Emily Austin, Assistant Professor, Department of Classics and the College
the event will take place, on zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 967 0661 2447
Passcode: wonder
Description: This talk ventures a literary archaeology of wonder as a way to begin thinking about poetry and the affects. Beginning with Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in Book 18 of the Iliad, then turning to Milton’s description of Satan’s shield in Paradise Lost, I conclude with a reading of Ronald Johnson’s erasure of Milton in Radi Os to begin conceptualizing poetry as a ‘technology of feeling.’ My aim is to counter descriptions of poetry (and art) as ‘useless’ with an account of some ways that poetry from various contexts and periods might be viewed as an affective technology—which enables us to experience, register, and share our emotions. Affective and figurative correspondences from Homer to Milton to Ronald Johnson allow us to track, over a long history of feeling, how technologies like shields, telescopes, and radios mediate and project wonder in these poets’ work.
Image credit: Philip Rundell. Shield of Achilles. 1821-22. Silver Gilt. Royal Collection Trust.