Affect and Inquiry

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AFFECT & INQUIRY

2014 Obermann Humanities Symposium, March 27-29, 2014

How do structures of feeling viscerally shape approaches to writing, research, pedagogy, art, performance, and activism? Academic researchers have long operated under the assumption that critical inquiry best proceeds by bracketing emotion. Contrary to that belief, this conference examines the powerful role that emotion plays in practices of inquiry across the disciplines.  Affect & Inquiry is a three-day symposium that takes stock of critical inquiry in relation to affect studies.  Our conference will engage participants in considering the expressive and sensory aspects of scholarly and artistic creativity, teaching and collegiality, and political and public engagement.  At our final breakout session, we will build on the conference’s activities to think together about the following: How does affect shape our work – and what environments allow scholars and artists within and outside of the academy to survive and thrive?

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Thursday, March 27, 2014 (All day) to Thursday, May 29, 2014 (All day)

How do structures of feeling viscerally shape approaches to writing, research, pedagogy, art, performance, and activism? Academic researchers have long operated under the assumption that critical inquiry best proceeds by bracketing emotion. Contrary to that belief, this conference examines the powerful role that emotion plays in practices of inquiry across the disciplines.  Affect & Inquiry is a three-day symposium that takes stock of critical inquiry in relation to affect studies.  Our conference will engage participants in considering the expressive and sensory aspects of scholarly and artistic creativity, teaching and collegiality, and political and public engagement.  At our final breakout session, we will build on the conference’s activities to think together about the following: How does affect shape our work – and what environments allow scholars and artists within and outside of the academy to survive and thrive?

Deborah Whaley

Co-director , University of Iowa , American Studies
Deborah Whaley’s teaching and research fields include the institutional history, theory, and methods of American studies, 19th- and 20th-century American cultural history, comparative ethnic studies, black cultural studies, popular culture, the visual and expressive arts, feminist and gender studies, and critical theory.

Jeff Bennett

Co-director , The University of Iowa , Communication Studies
Jeff recently published his first book, Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance (University of Alabama Press). This analysis, which places contemporary rhetorical theory in conversation with identity and movement studies, focuses on the federal donor deferral policies that prohibit gay men from giving blood. Although organizations such as the FDA purport to secure public safety through a scrupulous deliberative process, Jeff argues these measures are substantiated by a deleterious scientific discourse that positions gay men as contagions.
Headshot of Naomi Greyser

Naomi Greyser

Co-director , University of Iowa , English, American Studies, and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies
Naomi Greyser is associate professor of Rhetoric, English, and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, where she is also executive director of Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI).