Concept and co-ordination: Prof. Dr. Robin Curtis and Dr. Bettina Papenburg, Institute for Media and Cultural Studies, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Summer Semester 2016, Haus der Universität, Schadowplatz 14, lectures begin at 4:30 p.m. Affect – a palpable intensity, the atmosphere in a room – is transmitted between people, below the threshold of conscious perception, manifesting as bodily tension and relaxation. Affect is involuntary, non-conscious, contagious, and to a certain degree automatic. Affect’s political potential has been investigated with renewed intensity from gender and queer studies perspectives in the previous fifteen years. Scholars working along these lines focus particularly on negative affects such as shame, fear, outrage, depression and failure, asking the question: how can negative affects be (made) productive? They consider the enabling moments produced by choosing not to turn away from these affects, critically investigate their societal causes, and explore the creative employment of these intensities. These foci of investigation speak to the broader question: how can affects facilitate a thinking process? The lectures in this series address this question by exploring how affects are transmitted and negotiated in media cultures, how they enter scholarly practice, and what is the relation between scholarly authority and affect. April 27 - Losing My Cool: An Effective Research Strategy Prof. Dr. Laura U. Marks, Grant Strate University Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University
May 11 - Popular Culture, Regulation, and the Coagulation of New Sexual Categories
Dr. Laura Horak, Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University May 25 - Stillness En Route: Photographs of Refugees Dr. Marta Zarzycka, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Photography Studies, Utrecht University
June 8 - Playing with Sex: Aesthetics of Intimacy in 1960s Swedish and Finnish New Wave
Cinema Prof. Dr. Anu Koivunen, Professor of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University
June 22 - Trigger Warnings and Transformative Affect: (Auto)Ethnographical Encounters
with Disturbing Media Content Dr. Katariina Kyrölä, University Lecturer, University of Turku
July 6 - Swooning at (the) Cinema: Affective Gestures across Time and Space in
Todd Haynes's Carol (2016)
Prof. Dr. Jennifer M. Barker, Associate Professor, Moving Image Studies Program, Georgia State University July 20 - Cute 21st-Century Post-Fem-Bots Dr. Julia Leyda, Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam Funded by the Lehrförderungsfonds of the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. More