What is an emotion? Are your feelings inside you, or somewhere out there in the world? In this talk, Ya Zuo introduces the phenomenology of emotion in premodern China. The Chinese theories offer an interesting understanding of affectivity which places emotions beyond the subject. Emotion is simultaneously a deep cosmic order exceeding the mundane world and a fact anchored in the human body. A feeling, therefore, is constantly universal and personal at the same time.

Ya Zuo is an associate professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a cultural historian of middle and late imperial China. She is the author of Shen Gua’s Empiricism (Harvard University Press, 2018) and a range of articles on subjects such as theory of knowledge, sensory history, medical history, and the history of emotions.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.