Art and Emotion

Art without emotion is hard to imagine. Sadness and joy, disgust and humour: ingredients like these go into many successful works of art. For this reason, contemporary aesthetics boasts a copious literature on the expression of emotion by artworks and the emotional responses that artworks merit. What is it to express an emotion? What, in general, is an emotion? What role do emotions play in cognition? And in action? In aesthetic value? How is it both possible and rational to seek out experiences of negative emotions, such as sadness? What are the mechanisms of emotional expression and arousal in various art genres?

Each of these questions can be asked in a theoretical mood or an empirical one, and each is made more tractable as we answer the others. This two-part event introduces contemporary aesthetics to a rich historical tradition from South Asia. Rasa theorists address all of these questions, often giving them provocative answers.

The Events

Rasa 101 is a two-day crash course on rasa theory for anyone interested in getting up to speed on the topic, either with an eye to teaching it or to using it in their research.

Rasa Fest features presentations by five speakers over two days, with generous time allocated to discussion in formal sessions and during social breaks. It aims to create a community of scholars working on rasa from the perspective of contemporary aesthetics, emotion theory, philosophy of mind, or epistemology.

The organisers expect to include a workshop-demonstration and public performance by Nepathya, a Kutiyattam troupe from Kerala. Kutiyattam is a living heir to the ancient Sanskrit theatrical forms that shaped and were shaped by rasa theory.

A shared goal of both events is to boost efforts to diversify philosophy by modelling how we can equip ourselves with more than a superficial knowledge of problems that are shared across traditions, where answers given in some traditions can benefit other traditions.

Travel funding is available to those who wish to attend, thanks to generous grants from the American Philosophical Association, the American Society for Aesthetics, and the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, matched by the UBC Killam Professorship. The deadline to apply for funding is February 14. 

Registration is free and will be open on March 1. 

For more information, including a list of speakers and information about travel funding, please visit .

6th and 7th May 2016

Keynote speakers:

Prof Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Comparative Literature, Stanford University)

Author of Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature (2012), Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (2004) and After 1945 – Latency as Origin of the Present (2013).

Prof Giovanna Colombetti (Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter)

Author of The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind (2014) and co-editor of Emotion Experience, a 2005 special edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Mood is an affective phenomenon located at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics, musicology, psychology and sociology. It is as central to our experience of the world and of art as it is difficult to grasp theoretically. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, this two-day conference will foster an interdisciplinary discourse about the nature of mood and its significance for human and aesthetic experience. As an emerging topic in literary criticism, mood has been problematised in a number of recent publications, in which critics have turned to other disciplines, especially psychology and musicology, in order to develop theories of mood. At the same time, scientific disciplines, such as psychiatry and cognitive science, examine this phenomenon empirically in relation to mood disorders like depression. However, thus far the interdisciplinary potential harboured by mood has not been explored sufficiently. The main objective of this conference is to bring together and to create synergy between disciplines whose research addresses the same phenomenon in different ways.

Summarising the outcomes of the conference, we wish to submit a book proposal for an edited volume on mood with articles that bring together perspectives on mood from the disciplines mentioned above. This publication shall foster a vivid interdisciplinary discussion about the nature and significance of mood as an emerging topic in the humanities, social sciences and in the sciences, contributing to the process of conceptualising mood from a perspective that is not limited to the arts but is also informed by philosophical thought and scientific research.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

We invite abstracts of up to 300 words, plus a brief biography, for papers of no more than 20 minutes or panels of three associated papers. We encourage submissions that address the concept of mood from a theoretical or interdisciplinary angle. Submissions can cover but are not limited to the following questions and topics:

Concepts of mood/‘Stimmung’ in philosophy:
Heidegger’s ‘Stimmung’
Aesthetics and mood in Kant, Schiller et al.
Kierkegaard, existentialism and anxiety
Mood in psychology, psychiatry and cognitive science
Mood and its relationship to the concepts of emotion and affect
Mood disorders: depression, bipolar disorder, etc.
Empirical studies of mood
Neurological and cognitive foundations of mood
Aesthetics of mood
Aesthetics and theories of mood in literature
Concepts of mood, atmosphere, disposition and ethos in literature
Pathetic fallacy
The moods of Romanticism, Modernism, etc.
Mood in film and theatre
Cinematic and theatrical atmospheres
Cinematic portraits of mood: Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, von Trier’s Melancholia, etc.
Mood and music: theories of ‘Stimmung’, attunement, harmony and dissonance
Politics of mood/social moods
Normativity and mood
Social moods/collective states of mind/Prechter’s concept of mood in socionomics
Mood in linguistics/grammatical mood
Specific moods, such as:
Anxiety
Boredom
Melancholy
Nostalgia
Ennui
Paranoia
Exhilaration
Ecstasy
Awkwardness

Abstracts should be sent to mood.warwick2016@gmail.com by 29 February 2016.

From a literary studies point of view, narratological questions arise that put forward for discussion the limitations of language and linguistic expression to represent subjective experience. Fiction frequently seeks to achieve a mimetic perspective through which a voice can be given to people affected by the disease. In order to imitate the inner sensibility of patients suffering from dementia, writers, for example, engage in aesthetic experimentation and try to visualise dementia by means of narrative fragmentation, syntactic transgressions etc. As a matter of fact, fictional narratives of dementia recurrently echo avant-gardist literary traditions and their critique of the restrictions of language; at times they even recall Romanticism and its inclination towards irrationality. In this way alternative modes of experience, which question the authority of solely rationally determined worldviews and the legitimacy of hierarchical value systems, are put forward for discussion.

Philosophical approaches address the status of the patients’ subjectivity with regard to theories of personal identity. They particularly address difficulties that evolve in the course of losing the diachronic unity of consciousness and the individual’s access to his or her own self. Beyond the complex question whether – and to which degree – people affected by dementia are considered as persons according to the traditional or extended meaning of the term, drawing conclusions from the aforementioned discourses on identity raises multiple ethical challenges. Hence, analyses putting into relation prior declarations of intent and subsequent patient decisions that are made in the course of a patient’s fading cognitive faculties gain considerable significance. Considering the relation between advance directives and the patients’ autonomy opens the field to in-depth discourses on dementia and autonomy. These discourses may address patients’ different ways of self-determination and the preservation of their self-respect.

The conference aims at contributing to an interdisciplinary exchange of diverse views on dementia and subjectivity. It is, among others, specifically interested in perspectives from the disciplines of philosophy as well as literary and cultural studies. What is in focus is an examination of the subjective condition of persons affected by dementia: Which means of conveying subjective experience exist and in which way are they seized upon by literature and the arts? Which narrative, dramatic, poetic or formal strategies do literary texts, movies, paintings, photographs and other works of art apply in order to represent the subjective experience of dementia? How can philosophers analyse the cognitive conditions of dementia patients, and which ethical implications could arise as a consequence? With regard to the increasing prevalence of dementia, what significance is given to the act of remembering an individual’s past as well as to preserving the collective memory and cultural identity of communities?

We invite papers which respond to these and related questions. Papers may address topics including, but not limited to:

– Dementia and person
– Dementia, identity and autonomy
– Language, aphasia and literary modes of representing dementia
– Media-specific modes of representing dementia
– Dementia and narrativity
– Memory and forgetting
– Subjective experiences of patients, relatives and caregivers
– Intergenerational conflicts and emotions
– Respect towards patients and caregivers
– Spatial aspects and subjective perceptions of nursing homes

The official conference languages are English and German. Please send abstracts of 300-400 words for 20-30 minute presentations, along with a brief bio-note, in a Word document or PDF file to the three conference organisers by 10 March 2015.

Dr Daniela Ringkamp (Philosophy), daniela.ringkamp[at]uni-paderborn.de
Dr Sara Strauß (English Studies), sara.strauss[at]uni-paderborn.de
Leonie Süwolto, MA (Comparative Literature), schultel[at]mail.uni-paderborn.de