Spring 2016: Emotional Evidence
Emotional Evidence: The Role of Emotions in Building Knowledge
The Role of Emotions in Building Knowledge
Convener: Laura Otis
Thursday 1-4pm
Emotional Evidence: The Role of Emotions in Building Knowledge offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the ways that researchers in different fields treat emotions in their efforts to construct knowledge. Are emotions welcomed as providers of information, tolerated with skepticism, discouraged as disruptive, or banned outright? Weekly guest speakers from programs across Emory will present their research or creative work. Course topics will include 1) Ways for laboratory scientists to regard emotions in relation to their research, including a rethinking of the notions of “objectivity” and “subjectivity”; 2) The advantages and disadvantages of viewing human emotions from an evolutionary perspective; 3) Attitudes to take toward doctors’, nurses’, and patients’ emotions in the practice of medicine; 4) Considerations of emotion—or lack of emotion—as evidence of innocence or guilt in legal trials; 5) Implicit bias and the role of emotions in admissions and hiring choices; 6) The role of emotions in ethical decision-making; and 7) The potential creation of knowledge through poetry and fiction-writing via the quest for words to represent emotions.