{"id":1781,"date":"2021-01-25T11:26:44","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T11:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/?p=1781"},"modified":"2021-04-28T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T14:03:10","slug":"seminar-series-2020-2021-crowds-affects-cities-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/news\/seminar-series-2020-2021-crowds-affects-cities-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminar Series 2020-2021: Crowds, Affects, Cities\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Crowds, Affects, Cities seminar series continues through 2021. Jointly convened by QMUL Centre for the History of Emotions and the QMUL City Centre, the seminar explores crowds, emotions and urban space.<\/div>\n
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Please contact Regan (r.koch@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>), Pen (p.woods@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) or\u00a0Tiffany (t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) for the Zoom details<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Covid-19 has caused widespread disruption to the pleasures and possibilities of gathering in cities, bringing new forms of anxiety and uncertainty to urban encounters. As we make do in this time of social distancing, it seems a prime opportunity to assemble (online) and reflect on the intensities, emotions and experiences of urban crowds.

The seminar series aims to be interdisciplinary and international in scope, focused on 35 minute presentations with time for questions and discussion to follow. Anyone interested is welcome to join.

Register your interest by contacting\u00a0one of the convenors below, and we\u2019ll send you the Zoom link.

Convenors: Tiffany Watt Smith, Regan Koch, and Pen Woods

For more information, please contact

Tiffany\u00a0t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>

Regan\u00a0r.koch@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>

Pen\u00a0p.woods@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>

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Professor Julian Henriques, Wednesday 27th January 1pm, Zoom<\/strong><\/div>\n

“Sound, Knowledge and Space: the reggae sound system as an apparatus for the production affective intensities.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Recommended background viewing:\u00a0
Sound System Outernational #5 Naples, Italy (Astarbene, 2020,12 min)
https:\/\/vimeo.com\/396139747<\/a>
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This talk proposes that sound waves, auditory mechanics and the propagation of sounding provide a useful model for understanding the production and transmission of affect. Feelings are\u00a0literally vibratory. It takes the Jamaican dancehall sound system session as an\u00a0apparatus for the production affective intensities. Here the audio engineers developed the highly skilled knowledge and\u00a0practices, that I name as\u00a0phonomorphic\u00a0(sound-shaping) techniques, with which they use frequencies and amplitudes to \u201cengineer\u201d the vibes of the crowd.\u00a0While from ancient times it has been appreciated\u00a0that music communicates feelings and is freighted with emotions and associations, I argue that the\u00a0sounding\u00a0of the music provides an excellent analogue for the feeling of affect; both are non-representational. With the shared social experience of the space of the dancehall session volume (dB) or pressure equates with affective intensity, pitch with charge or excitement, auditory\u00a0diffusion with affective transmission and rhythm or refrain with entrainment and attunement. \u201cFeeling moved\u201d and moving (dance) become different sides of the same coin. This dynamic situated,\u00a0embodies and shared vibratory approach can be contrasted with more familiar visual relationships of reflection and gaze structured by the single point of view.<\/div>\n
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Prof. Benno Gammerl, Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute. Wednesday 24th February, 1pm, Zoom<\/strong><\/div>\n
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“Happy Together? The intimate publics of gay liberation in 1970s West Germany”
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[abstract to follow]<\/div>\n
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Prof. Colin McFarlane, Department of Geography, University of Durham. Wednesday 10 March, 1pm, Zoom <\/strong><\/div>\n
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“The Crowd and Covid-19”<\/strong><\/div>\n
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The relation between the crowd and the city has been historically pivotal to our understanding of cities. How might we understand the impact of the pandemic on those relations? The pandemic has had radical impacts not only on the material geographies of crowds, but on the position of the crowd in popular and political imaginations. While state and municipal governance sought to \u2018organise out\u2019 the possibilities of crowd densities in the city throughout the pandemic, all kinds of anxieties and concerns became attached to the image and idea of the crowd. The longer-term implications remain unclear, but in this presentation I draw on ongoing research on the relationship between the pandemic and density to describe some of relations that are being attached to the crowd, and reflect on the potential consequences both for cities and urban research.<\/div>\n
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7th April, 1pm BST

Dr Nida Kirmani (Lahore University)
Playing at the Boundary: Exploring the Relationship between Feminism and Fun in Karachi\u00a0<\/i>
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Khel Khel Mein (Playing at the Boundary) tells the story of three young people from the area of Lyari in Karachi–an area that is known for being one of the most conflict-ridden parts of the city. However,\u00a0Lyari is also one of the oldest, most diverse and vibrant parts of the city. Each of the young people features in this documentary are pushing gender boundaries in their own unique ways. Mehreen is a\u00a0champion boxer. Zulekha teaches girls and young women how to cycle and takes them out for regular rides, and Sidu is an activist who challenges gender roles and binaries. All three are struggling to\u00a0bring a change in their communities and in society in general and having fun in the process. The session will include a screening of this short documentary and a discussion of the relationship between\u00a0fun and feminism in Lyari and beyond.

Dr. Nida Kirmani is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Nida has published\u00a0widely on issues related to gender, Islam, women\u2019s movements, development and urban studies in India and Pakistan. She completed her PhD in 2007 from the University of Manchester in Sociology.\u00a0Her book,\u00a0Questioning \u2018the Muslim Woman\u2019: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality<\/i>, was published in 2013 by Routledge. Her current research focuses on urban violence, gender and\u00a0insecurity in the area of Lyari in Karachi.<\/p>\n

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5th May:\u00a0 POSTPONED<\/span>

Dr Karen Engle (University of Windsor, Canada) and Dr Yoke-Sum Wong (Alberta University of the Arts, Canada)
Thinking About Feeling: Once more with\u2026<\/i><\/b>

We will discuss our recent book project,\u00a0Feelings of Structure: Explorations in Affect\u00a0<\/i>and our research-creation project and exhibition, Structures of Anticipation. The edited book addressed the built\u00a0environment as spatial attunements. The essays explored the affective consciousness of spatial form\/s that is at once social and personal \u2013 emergent and emerging and ever in process in an\u00a0\u2018interrelating continuity\u2019. How do spatial forms contribute to, as Susan Lepselter writes, an ethnography of emergent feeling? How do we feel these spaces and world them \u2013 taking worlding as a way of\u00a0apprehension and comprehension \u2013 giving it a structure that we make (non)sense of. What are the emergent feelings, strategies and practices that are integrated into our material and experiential\u00a0world? Reversing Raymond Williams\u2019 influential essay, \u201cStructures of Feeling\u201d, we ask how and in what way we could address the mixed experiences to which \u2018the fixed forms do not speak at all\u2019. We\u00a0felt, to capture the traces of the experiences, the reverse phrasing, \u201cfeelings of structure,\u201d was a more intriguing invitation to grasping the (un)\/knowable.

The project Structures of Anticipation emerged out of working on the book as well as other related individual projects. The theme \u201canticipation\u201d attended to the anxious unknowables of the times during\u00a0the Trump years and before the pandemic happened. The theme hinged on the “sensation” of anticipation \u2013 circulating forces that build up, the turning of the corner, hope, reverie or of impending\u00a0dread, anxiety, trepidation, as we refreshed our social media feed \u2013 and how it affected our daily material lives.\u00a0

Dr Karen Engle is Associate Professor at the University of Windsor, Canada, in the School of Creative Arts, Windsor, Ont. Canada

Dr Yoke-Sum Wong is Associate Professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD) in Calgary, Ab. Canada<\/p>\n

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19th May, 5pm BST (NOTE TIME CHANGE)

Dr Deborah Gould (University of California)
Passions & Danger in Trump\u2019s Time and After<\/i><\/b>

This talk is animated by my own recently roused fear of the crowd. I offer a way to think about politics and emotion in a moment that has witnessed handwringing across the political spectrum about the\u00a0so-called masses\u2019 unruly passions dangerously seeping into the political realm and bringing with them Brexit, Trump, and the explosion of rightwing authoritarianism across the globe. Classical liberal\u00a0and democratic theorists have a response to the fear of the crowd: the political realm requires rational deliberation, and thus passions that might interfere must and can be exorcised, or at least\u00a0sequestered from public, political life. What, then, should we conclude in this moment where it has become obvious, if it wasn\u2019t before, that the political is awash in passions, and some very frightening\u00a0passions at that? Faced with the madding crowds of the Brexit\/Trump\/QAnon era, liberal and democratic theory might lead us to the conclusion that liberal institutions have not and cannot keep our\u00a0unruly passions in check, that democracy thus cannot work, that, in short, people\u2019s passions make them, us, unfit for democracy. But is it not possible to acknowledge that the political is saturated with\u00a0emotion without going down the crowd theorists\u2019 path that denies the demos our political capacities? My aim with this talk is political as much as conceptual: we need a better rendering of politics and\u00a0emotion in order to grasp the current moment. Through an exploration of crowds, affect, and the political, the talk considers left activist compositional tasks amid the felt contingency of the current\u00a0moment.
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Deborah Gould, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of\u00a0Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up\u2019s Fight Against Aids<\/i>\u00a0(University of Chicago Press,\u00a02009). She is currently writing a book titled\u00a0Composing Collectivities: Appetite, Encounters, and the Not-Yet of Politics.

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 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Crowds, Affects, Cities seminar series continues through 2021. Jointly convened by QMUL Centre for the History of Emotions and the QMUL City Centre, the seminar explores crowds, emotions and urban space.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Please contact Regan (r.koch@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>), Pen (p.woods@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) or\u00a0Tiffany (t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) for the Zoom details<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1781"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}