Meat-y Things to Do

FEELING AMERICAN STUDIES
Saturday November 10, 2007
9AM-5:30PM
Submission Deadline: Aug. 1, 2007
Sponsored by the New York Metro American Studies Association (NYMASA) and the Columbia Journal of American Studies (CJAS).

Feeling, emotion, affect, sensation, passion: the pervasiveness of these terms in current American Studies suggests that feeling is no longer taken as the opposite of thinking and that, indeed, emotions provoke, produce, and even embody knowledge. Although feelings are simultaneously part of our daily lives yet abstract, broadly understood and intensely personal, the knowledge that feeling provokes has often been limited within specific disciplines. Notwithstanding important explorations of sentiment and its connections to race and gender, American Studies has come late to the scholarly conversation on feeling, despite the fact that the inquiries that shape American Studies as a field—including identity, aesthetics, history, empire, narrative, media, and public culture—can and have been fruitfully pursued through the critical lens of emotion by scholars in other disciplines.

The purpose of this one-day conference is to invite dialogue on the place of feeling in American Studies. What might attention to feelings add to the field? What might it compromise? What kinds of feelings does American Studies—or, more broadly America—provoke? We particularly encourage submissions that discuss emotion before the 20th century, and presentations that cross historic and disciplinary borders.

Papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of the Columbia Journal of American Studies. Please send abstracts of 200-300 words to nymasa07@gmail.com by AUGUST 1ST. For information, contact Sarah E. Chinn, English Department, Hunter College, CUNY, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021