The next Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions work in progress seminar will take place on Wednesday 8 June. As previously announced, the talk scheduled for 25 May has been postponed. Visit https://projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/emotions/events/lunchtime-work-in-progress-seminars-2/ for this term’s full schedule.

“The Nerves of the Soul”. Emotional Knowledge between Music Aesthetics and Medicine (1740-1880)

Dr. Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild, University of Cologne

Wednesday 8 June, 1pm (lunch provided from 12.45)

In this talk I will introduce my research issues and present several examples from different decades between 1740 and 1880 to demonstrate important and interesting milestones in the development of the discourses between music aesthetics and medicine of this time period.  I aim to show a mutating interaction between the disciplines, starting with a fruitful interaction and exchange of musical and emotional knowledge between aesthetics and medicine in the middle of the 18^th century that by and by changed to rejection, ignorance or the declaration of irrelevance in the course of the 19^th century.

This very recent research project is concerned with the transformation of knowledge about the emotional effects of music between music aesthetics and medicine in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It examines inner-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary discourses that deal with the question of how the sensory perception of music could lead to affections, emotions, feelings. Therefore, historical knowledge about the operating modes of the ear, the nervous system and the brain is as relevant for my research as ideas about the interaction of body and soul, the understanding of emotions in general and aesthetic conceptions of music.

The talk will take place in the Arts One building, Room 2.07 at Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.

For travel directions and a campus map, visit: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/about/howtofindus/mileend/  

Roll up, roll up to the Carnival of Lost Emotions! Drop in to our circus-themed tent to participate in activities for all ages, including:

• The Lost Emotions Machine. Travel back in time and discover emotions of the past, guided by one of the Centre’s researchers
• Emotional Talismans. Do you carry around an object that has emotional meaning? Discuss your emotional talismans with our team and add a photo to our picture wall and our Flickr gallery. Join us to learn about East End folklorist Edward Lovett, view our collection of charms and amulets and talk about living with feeling past and present.
• Emotional Body Portraits with Liz Atkin. This session is led by London-based visual artist Liz Atkin, whose art re-imagines and transforms her own experience of Compulsive Skin Picking. Open to all, children and teenagers especially welcome! A mindful session mapping and reimagining the emotions of our bodies through dynamic colour and texture on large pieces of paper. No need to bring anything but your imagination!

For full details of the campus festival, visit: www.qmul.ac.uk/festival

Note that the date of this event has changed.

Please join us for our work-in-progress seminar on Wednesday 22 June, 1pm (Arts Two: Room 2.17) where Richard Ashcroft (QMUL) will give a paper titled: The Future of Emotions and Emotional Utopia

Abstract:

If we start from the presumption that emotions have histories, then we have to accept that they have futures too. Emotions appear, disappear, mutate, and can, perhaps, be created and destroyed. In this conversation piece (its too early to call it work in progress!) I would like to explore how we can talk and think about emotional futures. In particular I’m interested in ideal emotional futures – emotional utopias, utopias of the emotions. I am starting work on a book, tentatively entitled Utopian Biofutures, which explores the ethics, politics and imaginaries of biological enhancement in humans. One feature of most discussions of this theme is the priority given to reason and intelligence; however we are seeing an emergent discussion about moral enhancement, and about enhancement of our abilities to control and modify our romantic and sexual entanglements. On one – very important – level we can read these accounts symptomatically. But we can also take them at face value as explorations of our wants, and what we want to want, and of the futures of our wants, and the futures we want.

All are welcome and lunch will be provided from 12.45. Arts Two is number 35 on this campus map and coloured purple.

The full programme during May and June is as follows:

• Wed 8 June, 1pm – Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Cologne), ‘The Nerves of the Soul”. Emotional Knowledge between Music Aesthetics and Medicine (1740-1880)’  (Arts One: 2.07-g)

• Wed 15 June, 1pm – Eva Yampolsky (IUHMSP, University of Lausanne and Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris) ‘The pathology of suicide: a historical study of doctrines and practice in 19th-century France’ (Arts Two: 2.17)

• Wednesday 22 June, 1pm – Richard Ashcroft (QMUL) ‘Emotional Utopias and Emotions of the Future’, (Arts Two: Room 2.17)

Please join us for our next work-in-progress seminar on Wednesday 4 May, 1pm (Arts Two: Room 3.20) where Chris Millard (QMUL) will give a paper titled: Lies, damned lies, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy: statistics, infant mortality and the courtroom

Abstract:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a number of convictions for baby-murder were overturned, most famously in the case of Sally Clark, a solicitor imprisoned for the murder of her two children. The success of the appeals turned upon the power of statistics to convince juries of guilt or innocence, even if they (the statistics) were erroneous. The statistic in question had been deployed by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who had coined the term ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ in 1977, and shot to fame following his testimony at the trial of Beverly Allitt. Allitt was later convicted of multiple murder on a children’s ward in Grantham in the early 1990s. This paper contextualises the debate over statistics by looking at the history of infant mortality recording, and how this practice later meshes with the detection of potential child abuse, and even child murder. Concepts such as diagnostic labels (in this case ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’) might be usefully understood as operating within specific environments and within strict limits. When these concepts exceed those limits, or transcend those environments, the potential for disastrous error increases.

All are welcome and lunch will be provided from 12.45. Arts Two is number 35 on this campus map and coloured purple.

The Centre for the History of the Emotions is pleased to announce our next four lunchtime work-in-progress seminars:

• Wednesday 4 May, 1pm – Chris Millard (QMUL) ‘Lies, damned lies, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy: statistics, infant mortality and the courtroom’ (Arts Two: 3.20)

• Wed 8 June, 1pm – Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Cologne), ‘The Nerves of the Soul”. Emotional Knowledge between Music Aesthetics and Medicine (1740-1880)’  (Arts One: 2.07-g)

• Wed 15 June, 1pm – Eva Yampolsky (IUHMSP, University of Lausanne and Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris) ‘The pathology of suicide: a historical study of doctrines and practice in 19th-century France’ (Arts Two: 2.17)

• Wednesday 22 June, 1pm – Richard Ashcroft (QMUL) ‘Emotional Utopias and Emotions of the Future’, Arts Two: Room 2.17

Lunch is provided from 12.45 and all are welcome! QMUL is a 5-minute walk from Mile End tube station. Arts One is building 37 and Arts Two is building 35 on this campus map.

Contact emotions@qmul.ac.uk for more information.