Teaching Responsibility

LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:

Humanities and Social Science

Learning Methods

Lecture

Workshop

Module Offerings

6105SOC-SEP-MTP

Aims

1. To explore the development of approaches in philosophy and cultural and critical theory to the study of emotions, focusing in particular on fear. 2. To apply a range of contemporary theoretical approaches to case studies in fear. 3. To examine the aesthetic politics at stake in the public life of private emotions.

Learning Outcomes

1.
Clearly discuss how emotions have been approached within differing theoretical traditions.
2.
Employ appropriate conceptual approaches to examine the politics and aesthetics at stake in a particular case study of fear.
3.
Situate both the shifting politics and aesthetics of fear and changing approaches to affect and emotions within the humanities and social sciences within broader cultural, political and epistemic contexts.

Module Content

Outline Syllabus:Emotions in history from the ancients to the modern Approaches to emotions within philosophy and the social sciences Variegating fear: fear and its forms The public life of fear The aesthetics of phobia Case studies in phobia
Module Overview:
In this module you will begin by examining major philosophical and theoretical approaches to the study of emotions. Thereafter you will examine a series of case studies in fear, focusing in particular on phobias, tracing out etymologies and genealogies of phobia, and examining the aesthetic politics of phobia in historical and epistemic contexts. This section of the syllabus will be organised alphabetically in the manner of popular psychologies of phobias. In this main part of the module, you will begin with agoraphobia, the canonical modern classification of phobia, and conclude with xenophobia, a non-canonical phobia - the coining of which is subject to a problematic and disputed historiography.
Additional Information:This module will begin by examining major philosophical and theoretical approaches to the study of emotions. Thereafter the module will examine a series of case studies in fear, focusing in particular on phobias, tracing out etymologies and genealogies of phobia, and examining the aesthetic politics of phobia in historical and epistemic contexts. This section of the syllabus will be organised alphabetically in the manner of popular psychologies of phobias. In this main part of the module, students will begin with agoraphobia, the canonical modern classification of phobia, and conclude with xenophobia, a non-canonical phobia the coining of which is subject to a problematic and disputed historiography. Along the way students will engage with a range of other uses of phobia, including the aesthetics and gender politics of claustrophobia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; kalliphobia and the politics of beauty in twentieth century art; and logophobia and the politics of Foucault’s critique of modernity and representation. Along the way students will also unpick the relationships between phobia and other modalities of fear, including horror and terror, and will also consider the relationships between phobias, humour, and the ironisation of fear.

Assessments

Essay

Presentation