What is that thing that you feel; that makes your palms sweat and heart beat faster, gives you goosebumps, and fills you with something you cannot define? Imagine entering a room, and you read the room and its vibes: whose vibes are they? Do you read the room, or are the people, objects, and relations what you read? There is something pleasantly unsettling about not knowing what our bodies know and react to. This seminar is concerned with those things: love, disgust, boredom, melancholy, and more. Are these affects? Emotions? Feelings? Is there a difference in between, and if yes, does it really matter?
This class will engage with literary and cultural texts such as literature, film, and art/photography to study affects. To better grasp the theoretical debates around affect theory and the affective turn since the early 90s, we will explore a range of theoretical dispositions of affects, emotions, feelings, and moods to engage with some of the significant strands in affect theory. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which affect insistently connects (and disconnects) individuals to larger social experiences. At the same time, we will consider how attention to affect might allow us to situate the subject in relation to race, biopower, terror, sexuality, gender politics, vulnerability, and trauma.
“[H]ow charming to be intrusted with the care and education of children!” (Brontë 11)
In this course, students will build on and consolidate the theoretical and methodological knowledge acquired in the foundational modules ‘Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies’ I and II. At the centre of our discussions will be close readings of Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and we will draw on historical context as well as a variety of theoretical approaches, including gender studies, postcolonial studies, disability studies, ecocriticism, and adaptation theory. By applying these approaches to the two novels, we will hone your skills in literary analysis and explore how different theoretical lenses shape our understanding of texts.
- Lehrende/r: Stefanie Tegeler