Emotions and their Expression · PHIL 281

About the seminar

This course will investigate the nature of the emotions and how they are expressed. The first half of the seminar will focus on the emotions themselves, from the perspective of neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, and feminist theory. The second half of the seminar will focus on the expression of emotions in faces, emoji, emotive language, music, and art.

Schedule

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Date	Topic	Reading	Recommended
Wed1/5	Session 1Introduction: emotion and cognition Handout Part I. Emotions On zoom No reading	—	—
Wed1/12	Session 2Neuroscience Handout On zoom	Anderson and Adolphs (2018) The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis Chapter 6: “The Neuroscience of Emotion in Rodents” Chapter 9: “The Neuroscience of Emotion in Humans” For the idea of emotions as “decoupled” (or “cognitive”) reflexes, see pgs. 18-23, pgs. 143-153, and Chapter 3, “Building Blocks and Features of Emotions” (You can use this reading as the basis for Paper 1)	Dalgleish (2004) “The emotional brain”
Wed1/19	Session 3Cognitive science Handout On zoom	Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988) The Cognitive Structure of Emotion Chapter 2: “The Structure of the Theory” Chapter 3: “The Cognitive Psychology of Appraisal” Chapter 5: “Reactions to Events”	Lazarus (1991) “Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion” Oatley and Johnson-Laird (2014) “Cognitive Approaches to the Emotions”
Wed1/26	Session 4Philosophy Handout On zoom Presentation: case 1, case 2	Sartre (1939) “Outline of a Phenomenological Theory” from Sketch for a Theory of Emotions Nussbaum (2004) “Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance”	James (1884) “What is an emotion?” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018) “Emotion”
Wed2/2	Session 5Feminist theory Handout Short paper due Sun 2/6 On zoom Presentation: youtube	Lorde (1981) “Uses of Anger” Jagger (1989) “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology” Fricker (1991) “Reason and Emotion”	Campbell (1994) “Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression”
Wed2/9	Session 6Facial expression Handout Part II. Expression In person! Presentation: youtube Presentation: handout	Russell and Fernandez-Dols (1997) “What does a facial expression mean?” Smith and Scott (1997) “A Componential Approach to the meaning of facial expressions”	Cowen, Sauter, Tracy, and Keltner (2019) “Mapping the Passions: Toward a High-Dimensional Taxonomy of Emotional Experience and Expression” Scherer, Mortillaro, Mehu (2017) “Facial Expression Is Driven by Appraisal and Generates Appraisal Inference” Optional Wegrzyn, Vogt, Kireclioglu, Schneider, Kissler (2017) “Mapping the Emotional Face: How Individual Face Parts Contribute to Successful Emotion Recognition” Du, Tao, and Martinez (2014) “Compound Facial Expressions of Emotion” Medlej, Joumana (2010) A map of emotions and facial expressions
Wed2/16	Session 7Linguistic expression Handout Guest lecture: Jessica Rett Presentation: youtube Presentation: handout Warning: The Potts reading explicitly discusses slurs, including the n-word.	Potts (2006) “The expressive dimension” Rett (2021) “The semantics of emotive markers and other illocutionary content”	Kaplan (1999) “The meaning of ouch and oops” Ginzburg, Mazzocconi, and Tian (2020) “Laughter as language” Rett (2021) “A comparison of expressives and miratives”
Wed2/23	Session 8Emoji Handout Sun 2/27: Schedule meeting to discuss final paper handout Presentation: handout Note: Read for the examples and the overall ideas; don't worry about the formal theory. Skip Sections 3.5 and 4.3, Section 5 is optional.	Grosz, Greenberg, De Leon, and Kaiser (2021) “A semantics of face emoji in discourse”	Maier (2021) “Emojis as pictures”
Wed3/2	Session 9Art and music Handout Presentation 1: music, handout Presentation 2: music, handout Note: Start with the Langer.	Langer (1942) “On significance in music” Kivy (2002) “Emotions in the music” McCloud (1993) “Living in line”	Johnson-Laird and Oatley (2016) “Emotions in Music, Literature, and Film”
Wed3/9	Session 10Political emotions Handout Long paper due Sun 3/20 Guest lecture: Myisha Cherry Presentation: youtube Presentation: handout	Cherry (2021) “Introduction” and “Painting in Broad Strokes” from The Case for Rage Ahmed (2010) “Happy Objects”	Cherry (2021) “Political Anger” Marcus (2000) “Emotions in Politics”

Requirements

Collections

Barrett, Lewis, and Jones (2016) Handbook of Emotions
Gregg and Seigworth (2010) The Affect Theory Reader
Russell, Fernández-dols, Miguel, and George (1997) The Psychology of Facial Expression
Fernández-dols and Russell (2017) The Science of Facial Expression
Solomon (2004) Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions