Saturday, 7.7.2018
16:00
In English
Moderation: Annika Haas

This presentation will draw from a larger project that aims to articulate notions of sovereignty, democracy, and freedom in affective and sensory terms. lt conceives of sovereignty as an embodied practice rather than an abstract concept and as something that must be learned and experienced collectively over time rather than as a fixed and final condition of a sovereign or discrete individual or nation. 
Focusing in particular on how my work on affect has been informed by art practice, the talk will develop the concept of the »sovereignty of the senses« through examples that include Alison Bechdel‘s graphic narrative memoir Are You My Mother? and queer and feminist installation projects by Zoe Leonard, Rachael Shannon, and Karin Michalski that use built environments to transform affective, sensory, and social experience.

Ann Cvetkovich is Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women‘s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (Rutgers, 1992), An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke, 2003), and Depression: A Public Feeling (Duke, 2012).