Workshop: Memory and Emotion in Nineteenth-Century German Visual Culture

University of London, School of Advanced Study, Institute of Modern Languages Research, Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory

2-6 pm 6 June, 2014

Room 243 (Senate House)
Malet Street 
London WC1E 7HU

We are inviting participation in a workshop exploring the intersection of cultural memory with emotion studies to create a methodological toolbox for historians. Both approaches contain the problem of integrating subjective experience with the social scientific process of researching and writing about the past. Papers will analyze an aspect of nineteenth-century German visual culture through a specific theoretical lens focusing on emotion and cultural memory. Some of the questions under discussion might include: to what extent can emotion be theorized as a cultural or historical phenomenon? Are the interior lives of individuals relevant to historiography? What new insights can be gained through the analysis and interpretation of documentary evidence of emotions? Can historians trace the reverberations of an emotionally freighted episode through time? To what degree is identity established or shaped by individual or group reactions to events? We invite scholars of nineteenth-century German culture, art, and aesthetics, as well as social scientists interested in questions of emotion, and all interested individuals to attend the workshop. Participants may choose to read papers in advance or simply to attend and participate actively in discussion.

Presenters and Papers:

Prof. Eric Anderson (RISD), 'Emotional Interiors'

Prof. Priyanka Basu (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) ‘August Schmarsow and Art Historical Memory’

Emilie Oleron Evans (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III/Queen Mary), 'Einfuehlung and Collective Architectural Identity'

Dr. Colleen Becker (University of London, School of Advanced Study, IMLR, CCM) , 'Collective Remembrance of the "Dichter und Denker" Legacy in Visual Culture'

Dr. Cheryce von Xylander (Max-Plank-Institut/Technical University, Darmstadt), 'Sentient Tuition' 

Please contact co-organizers Dr. Colleen Becker at [log in to unmask] or Prof. Eric Anderson [log in to unmask] for more information or to register your place at the session.