September 2024 session

GENDER STUDIES (Panel 1) - ART AND EMOTION (Panel 2)

20 September 2024 – 1:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

DIRE research unit symposium:  ‘Rendez-vous du savoir Humanités’ (TV Réunion)

Advance registration is required to attend this event. Please register using the link below

https://univ-reunion-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JrrMsclgRAi51gQh86I4FA

University of Réunion Island

Abstracts of presentations:

Alexandre Gefen, “What do emotions bring to the study of literary texts?”

Affective sciences emphasize the emotional and cognitive aspects of the literary experience, enriching the study of literature, which previously focused on the work and its author. It highlights the role of emotions in literary response and the cognitive processes involved in reading and interpreting texts. This interdisciplinary approach has the potential to deepen our understanding of how literature affects readers and the broader cultural and social implications of literary works. It is consistent with a vision of literature centered on its reader and the effects of the text.

Through an overview of the main themes of affective sciences and a number of key concepts (empathy, catharsis, pathos, tears, etc.), we will demonstrate the contributions of the affective turn in literary theory and history.

Pauline Hachette, “The Effect of Affect”

The affective turn in literary studies is often presented as an afterthought to the structuralist moment in literary studies. Formalisms that evacuated the subject were succeeded by the need to reintegrate the sensitive and subjective components of the text, which, combined with advances in neurocognitive science in particular, explains the importance of this issue over the past three decades.

However, we have inherited this theoretical moment in literature, and the language sciences, from linguistics to semiotics, have themselves sought to equip themselves with tools to study emotions in language. It is this question of the construction of the affect effect in literary texts, contrary to a naturalizing conception of emotions, that we would like to examine.

Lise Segas, “Popular music from an intersectional perspective: the case of champeta in the Colombian Caribbean”

Champeta is a musical genre and cultural phenomenon that originated in the working-class neighborhoods of the major cities of the Colombian Caribbean (Cartagena, Barranquilla). Like many popular African-American urban genres (reggaeton, rap, etc.), champeta has been the victim of widespread disparagement and marginalization, with its violence, immorality, and misogyny being among the aspects highlighted. However, as several specialists have pointed out, these accusatory remarks could apply to all areas of the arts and sciences: isn't rock music misogynistic and violent? Don't classical operas present a misogynistic and violent world? Targeting musical genres from racialized working-class communities with such discourse reveals an ideological bias that goes beyond musical appreciation. On the contrary, the social and racial marginalization of these sectors of society contributes to reinforcing this discourse, which is formulated by legitimizing authorities (the press, cultural institutions, universities).
In the case of women seeking to assert themselves as artists in these musical genres, the situation is even more complex because they face additional marginalization related to gender. We will therefore examine the importance of considering gender as a category of analysis alongside other categories such as race and class in order to understand the social and power relations at play in the music world, particularly popular music, and those faced by women and LGBTQI+ minorities. This relates to the concept of intersectionality conceptualized by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989).

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Mónica Cárdenas Moreno

A lecturer at the University of La Réunion (DIRE research unit), she is interested in the relationship between gender and literature, as well as between literature and memory in Hispanic America during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She has published various critical editions of 19th-century Latin American literature and collective publications, including issue no. 8 of the journal TrOPICS [Women and conflicts in the Hispanic and Spanish-American world (19th-21st centuries) https://tropics.univ-reunion.fr/1180] with Eglantine Samouth, and issue no. 43 of the journal IRIS (University of Grenoble-Alpes) “The Augmented Body: Imagination and Reality” with Françoise Sylvos and Christine Orobitg [https://publications-prairial.fr/iris/index.php?id=3302].

Alexandre Gefen

Founder of Fabula.org, he was one of the pioneers of Digital Humanities in France (along with Guillemette Crozet, La littérature. Une infographie, CNRS Editions, 2022). Currently Director of Research at the CNRS [unit “Theory and History of Modern Arts and Literature”], he is a historian of ideas and a literary theorist. Inspired by aesthetics, his research focuses on the power of literature (L’idée de littérature. De l’art pour l’art aux écritures d’intervention, Corti, 2021).

Pauline Hachette

An associate researcher at the Centers for Media, Technology, and Internationalization Studies (Cemti) and Literary Fabric (Fablitt) at Paris 8, she has produced numerous articles and journal issues ("Sensitive Uprisings. Corps et affects dans l’expérience de la violence," with R. Huët, Socio, FMSH, 2022). Her transdisciplinary work focuses on the literary writing of emotions and sensory experience, and the insight it provides into contemporary social crises (Sous le signe de la colère. Henri Michaux et Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Classiques Garnier, 2022).

Florence Pellegry

Florence Pellegry is a lecturer in English studies at the University of La Réunion (DIRE research unit) and a specialist in the social and cultural history of the United Kingdom during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Her work focuses in particular on women's history, gender relations, and the history of private life through the lens of the London Foundling Hospital archives. Her first monograph, which highlights these intimate archives, is scheduled for publication in 2025. Since 2021, she has been editor-in-chief of Alizés, an English studies journal based in Réunion (https://alizes.univ-reunion.fr). Issue 44, scheduled for November 2024, will address the issue of sex education in the English-speaking world (“Sex (Mis)Education in the English-Speaking World”).

Lise Segas

Lise Segas, senior lecturer at Bordeaux Montaigne University, is a specialist in 16th- and 17th-century colonial Spanish America and Latin American literature. A member of the CHISPA center (EA Ameriber), she is interested in women's history, feminism in the arts, and gender studies. Her current research focuses on the hyper-contemporary era and the Colombian Caribbean, particularly champeta culture and music, popular feminist activism, and so-called urban protest music.

Françoise Sylvos

Director of the DIRE center (University of La Réunion), she studies French utopias of the first half of the 19th century (L’épopée du possible ou l’arc-en-ciel des utopies, Champion, 2008) as well as authors representative of Romanticism and Decadence (Nerval ou l’antimonde, L’Harmattan, 1998). She has focused on comedy, the augmented body, and the literature and societies of the Indian Ocean, notably in Gages d’affection, with Florence Pellegry and Sandra Saayman, PUI, 2020).