Members of the Affective Experience Lab attended the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Conference in August 2024 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Conference offered an opportunity to present the work of the Lab and Platform to a wide range of international colleagues, particularly those from Continental universities.
Corinne Saunders delivered a paper on ‘Medical Humanities, Affective Experience and Medieval Studies’ for a panel on ‘Collaboration, Networks, and Supporting New Work in Medieval English Studies’, organised by researchers from the Universities of Bern, Switzerland and St Andrews (including Dr Hannah Piercey). The session explored the challenges and opportunities offered by collaborative and interdisciplinary methods, including issues of gender and race, and the opportunities opened up by dialogue between medieval and modern as well as between disciplines. The session was extremely well attended, and inspired much interest in the possibilities offered by medical humanities for intervention in contemporary debates, as well as in the work of the Lab on the senses, the emotions and the power of affect. We look forward to developing these connections through some of our future events.
Fraser Riddell co-convened a seminar on ‘Literature and Mental Health: Diagnosis, Syndrome and Symptoms’ with Professor Nicolas Boileau (Aix-Marseille University). Our three sessions explored the effects of ‘failure of diagnoses’ in the ‘syndrome novels’ that emerged in the 1980s and have flourished since. Speakers explored literary representations of care, wellbeing and the therapeutic process, examining how individuals make sense of symptoms and how diagnoses forms their identities as patients.
ESSE is a European federation of national higher educational associations for the study of English languages and literatures. Its biennial conferences attract large numbers of participants from across Europe and beyond (in Lausanne, c. 600 participants). Its next conference takes will take place at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 31 August–4 September.
Fraser Riddell is currently preparing a proposal for a collection of essays on The Symptom and the Symptomatic in Modern and Contemporary Literature, for submission in early 2025. If you are interested in being involved, please email the Lab team.
