ENGL 236AC: AFFECT & CREATIVITY

University of California, Santa Barbara

This course asks concentric questions about the relationship between emotio n and self-writing: How do emotions enter the domains of consciousness and language? How does a stable selfhood emerge from the flux of emotional life , consciousness and memory? How do writers experiment with the concept of t he self? Our objective is to examine the logic of experimental 'auto-ficti on' as a function of the biological and psychological mechanisms underpinni ng our sense of self. Rather than turning to existing cognitive or psychoan alytic literary criticism, in this course we discuss primary texts on the n euroscience of emotion and contemporary psychoanalysis alongside literary w orks, enabling you to envisage your own interdisciplinary approach.