Fluids, Sparks, and Spirits in Antebellum America (2/13)

Fluids, Sparks, and Spirits in Antebellum America
Justine Murison, UIUC Monticello Fellow
Wednesday, February 13, 3:30 pm

Newberry Library
2nd Floor, Towner Fellows' Lounge
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324


What are the politics and physiology of anxiety? Is nervousness subject to historical change?
Does a literary work represent, exploit, or contain cultural anxiety? Or all three? By turning to the antebellum era, a period that popularized physiological conceptions of nervous interiority, this talk explores the relationship between theories of the electrical body popular in antebellum physiology and its widespread (and sometimes paradoxical) uses in cultural, political, and theological thinking.

All are welcome!
Refreshments are served at 3:30 p.m.
presentation begins at 4:00 p.m.