University of Washington Graduate Student Conference
Sponsored by the Department of German Studies, with the Departments of Art History, English, Drama, and Spanish & Portuguese Studies
In the 18th Century, Western thinkers took up the Enlightenment project of binding societies into a single narrative, which continues to define modern discourses on sentiment and propriety. Within this historic context, and its long legacy into modern thought, individual feelings that contradict the resulting social constructions have been pushed to the peripheries or banned altogether. This complication of order and feeling seems to operate bilaterally: the subjective and individualized domain of “feeling” disrupts the desired simplicity of rules and regulations that seek to contain knowable societies, legible moral codes, and disciplined human subjects. Meanwhile, if sensation, affect, and emotion are oriented without frameworks, how can the human experience be unified and societies or individuals be imagined as interconnected? This conference seeks to wrestle with the precarious relationship between rules and feelings, reason and emotion, and ask how cultural and literary interventions of thought in/after the 18th century have worked to sculpt historical and modern optics on these perpetually entangled entities.
Conference Schedule
1.30-1.35pm Opening Remarks
Anna Malin Gerke (UW German)
Panel I: Emotion & Identity
Moderated by Kexin Song (UW English)
1.35-1.50pm - “Blank Mirror: Empathetic Roots of Individual Identity and Sentimental Literature's Mimetic Sanctuary in Frankenstein”
Natalia Owen (UW Neuroscience)
1.50-2.05pm - “The murderous dissection of Arabella in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson”
Detlev Weber (UW German)
2.05-2.20pm - “Education and Emotion: The Influence of Self-judgment and Social Rules on Sentimental Women”
Sophia Schuessler (UW German)
2.20-2.35pm - Q&A, facilitated by Megan Butler (UW English)
Panel II: Empathy & Sentiment
Moderated by Detlev Weber (UW German)
2.40-2.55pm - “Sentimental Malfunctions in Her Mouth as Souvenir: The Legacy of Moral Sentimentality in Modern Dystopic Poetry”
Anne Duncan (UW English)
2.55-3.10pm - “Empathy and Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments”
Dr. Charles Chesnut (UW English)
3.10-3.25pm - “The Anxiety of Death and the Logic of Sentimentality in A Sentimental Journey”
Kexin Song (UW English)
3.25-3.40pm - Q&A, facilitated by Tori Champion (UW Art History)
3.40-4.00 pm, Intermission
Panel III: Literature & Culture
Moderated by Lexi Smith (UW Spanish and Portuguese)
4.00-4.15pm - “Rebels with a Cause: Millwood, Wollstonecraft, and the Legacy of Milton’s Eve”
Megan Butler (UW English)
4.15-4.30pm - “Delineating the Passions: Charles Le Brun’s Conférence sur l'expression générale et particulière as Narrative Guide for 18th-Century Visual Artists”
Tori Champion (UW Art History)
4.30-4.45pm - “Taught to Love: G.E. Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson and the 18th-Century Pedagogy of Affection”
Jonathan Rizzardi (UW Drama)
4.45-5.00pm - Q&A, facilitated by Detlev Weber (UW German)
Panel IV: Politics & Emotion
Moderated by Sophia Schuessler (UW German)
5.05-5.20pm - “‘My new beloved...is politics’: a Passionate Proposal for Chilean Citizenship in Martín Rivas”
Lexi Smith (UW Spanish and Portuguese)
5.20-5.35pm - “Passionate Politics: Angela Merkel’s Emotional Rallying Call in Pandemic Speech”
Anna Malin Gerke (UW German)
5.35-5.45pm - Q&A and Closing Discussion, facilitated by Jonathan Rizzardi (UW Drama)
This graduate student conference is planned, organized, and conducted by the students in "Sense and Sensibility: Ethics and Emotions in the 18th Century" (German 590/English 524), winter 2021.
Special thanks to Dr. Charles Chestnut for generously providing refreshments for participants!