The Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (CENES) is thrilled to host an exciting array of courses in Winter 2022-23. Among these is CENS 202 001: Great Works of Literature from Central, Eastern and Northern Europe (in English), taught by Dr. Ervin Malakaj, a three-credit course about “Bad Feelings: The Literary Lives of Anger, Boredom, and Jealousy” that explores the relationship between negative emotions and literary cultures.
CENES: What is the main focus of this course?
Ervin Malakaj: In the class we consider why some feelings are considered bad or ugly. Boredom, for instance, has a fairly bad reputation. It is said to befall those who are not efficiently embedded in systems governed by capitalist productivity. 19th-century writers found this dynamic between boredom and what it says about the people experiencing it quite powerful to interrogate the expectations social institutions impose onto subjects. Our class will examine these and related dynamics.
CENES: What are the particular highlights?
EM: Early on in the course I ask students to complete an affective map of UBC’s campus. They are asked to pick and describe a location on campus on the basis of what types of feelings it hopes to elicit from those who frequent it. Students then ask themselves what types of happiness scripts universities present as acceptable and what that means for those of us who fail to be happy in some locations. It’s an excellent exercise to help students think about how emotionality structures much of our daily lives and how some of the things we discuss about 19th century literature connects to what we experience today.
CENES: What gave you the idea to design this course?
EM: I work in the field of emotion studies and write about so-called bad feelings all the time. My big book project examines frustration and literary creativity. This inspired the course.
CENES: What part of the course do you look forward to most?
EM: I am a huge fan of extreme close-reading of passages from texts we read for class. This requires a lot of preparation to stage, but once in place, I feel I am able to co-create meaning about texts we read with students. It’s quite astonishing. Because close-reading is so much informed by who we are and differs from person to person, each class is exciting.
CENES: Which students do you think might be particularly interested in this course?
EM: The class is suited for first-timers to literary studies as much as it can accommodate those with some background in literary analysis. In my experience, students from all backgrounds are able to find something meaningful in the course in particular because of my interest in connecting what we read to our lived experiences as readers today.
CENES: What do you think are the most important insights students can take from this course?
EM: That feelings are great resources for us to help understand the way we navigate the world. And literature is very good at illustrating how emotions face the world and how the world faces our feelings.
