Music and the Affects
Oct
18
3:00 PM15:00
Music

Music and the Affects

*All times are PDT

Roger Mathew Grant, Wesleyan University

Why is it that we use musical terms to describe feelings and moods? We often speak of people as low key, high strung, or having a bad temper, referring to their temperament or tuning as though they themselves were an instrument. As it turns out, several theories of the basic human emotions—or the affects as they’re also called—have musical origins. To understand the connection, we can pay particular attention to a moment during the eighteenth century when affect theory and music theory were mutually entangled.

Roger Mathew Grant is Associate Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. His first book, Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era, won the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory. His second book, Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical, will appear with Fordham University Press this Spring.

Why is it that we use musical terms to describe feelings and moods? We often speak of people as low key, high strung, or having a bad temper, referring to their temperament or tuning as though they themselves were an instrument.

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Where numbers come from and what they mean
Sep
20
3:00 PM15:00
Psychology

Where numbers come from and what they mean

*All times are PDT

Ian Lyons, Georgetown University

The ability to guide behavior based on relative differences in perceived magnitudes is one of the most ancient cognitive capacities we know of. The ability to represent quantities in written, abstract and exact form is—as far as we know—exclusive to humans and only a few millennia in the making. Are these two abilities linked, and as for the latter, what took us so long? What are the cognitive mechanisms that underlie numerical processing in humans and other species?

Ian Lyons is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University. He received a bachelor of science from Brown University in 2004 in Cognitive Science. In 2012, he received his PhD from the University of Chicago in Cognitive Psychology.

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Questioning the Past: on the use and abuse of ancient texts in modern politics
Sep
6
3:00 PM15:00
Political Science

Questioning the Past: on the use and abuse of ancient texts in modern politics

*All times are PDT

Mark Fisher, Georgetown University

Named after the ancient Greek general and writer, an idea known as the “Thucydides Trap” has gained prominence in contemporary discussions of American foreign policy. While raising questions about the inevitability of war between established and rising powers, this particular framing of ancient thought also identifies issues in how historical authors are used by politicians and policymakers. How can we more constructively consider historical thinkers when addressing modern problems?

Mark Fisher is an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University. His research focuses primarily on ancient Greek political thought, but he teaches more widely in the history of political thought and historical methodology. He is currently writing a book about Thucydides' understanding of Athenian democracy and its relationship to epic notions of heroism.

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How do relationships get under our skin?
Aug
16
3:00 PM15:00
Psychology

How do relationships get under our skin?

*All times are PDT

Darby Saxbe, University of Southern California

Although psychology has typically examined the individual in isolation, new evidence finds that our emotions, behaviors, and even physiology can be shared with the people around us. How do we entrain with others in our social world, and what does this tell us about the impact of social connection on health and well-being?

Darby Saxbe is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California, where she runs the Neuroendocrinology of Social Ties (NEST) Laboratory. Her current research focuses on hormones, brain, and behavioral changes over the transition to parenthood.

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