Emotions – Summer Liberal Arts Institute

Thinking About Feelings: The Science of Emotion

July 12 – Aug 1, 2025

This program is open to rising sophomores (students currently in their first year of high school)

Every minute of every day is experienced through emotions. For instance, mirth and pain alike, are not only featured prominently in philosophy and the arts, but are also at the heart of scientific research. Why do we laugh? Why do we become depressed? Why do we consume horror movies? How can the intersection of science and humanities inform our understanding of individual and collective emotions?

This course will introduce students to the compelling body of work surrounding emotions. The program will cover three emotions: mirth, sadness, and fear and will look at them through three different perspectives. First, students will analyze how emotions are represented in literature, music and film. Second, they will investigate the cognitive causes and effects of emotions, and finally, they will learn about their psychological processes and functions. This multidisciplinary approach to affect theory will allow students to explore how STEM fields and humanities are connected and interdependent. Students will hone their analytical skills of cultural artifacts and experience how a college lab works. Most importantly, they will learn the true value of a liberal arts education where academic disciplines constantly merge in creative and stimulating ways.

Summer Carls can earn up to six Carleton course credits (typically transfers as three semester credits) for successfully meeting faculty expectations and completing course requirements. In addition to receiving written feedback about course performance from faculty, students will receive one of the following three possible grade designations: satisfactory (S), credit (Cr), or no credit (NC). Formal academic transcripts are available upon request for Summer Carl alumni and will reflect the name of the course and grade earned.

Topics and Faculty

The program will cover three emotions: mirth, sadness, and fear and will look at them through three different perspectives.

Reading Emotions

How do different cultures represent emotions? Are certain genres-literary or otherwise- better suited to express a particular feeling? In this section of the course, students will work on two major skills. First, we will analyze how emotions appear in works of literature, film, and stand-up comedy. Students will question what purpose these representations serve and how we can interpret them. Second, students will learn how to represent emotions both with their bodies and through academic writing. Bringing together literary and cultural studies, this section of the course will demonstrate what humanists do with emotions.

Faculty

Sandra Rosseau

Program Director

Sandra Rousseau (Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University) teaches courses in contemporary French and Francophone culture, history, and memory. She has developed classes focused on visual media, pop culture, and more particularly on bandes dessinées. Her research interests include stand-up comedy as memory, humor and trauma, politics and ethics, and contemporary French pop culture. She has recently published articles on francophone stand-up, on Algerian cartoons and censorship, and on Graphic novelist Nawel Louerrad. Sandra is interested in supporting all students on campus and loves to welcome you to her office for an intellectual or a casual chat. When she is not reading or writing, she is cooking for friends while listening to her favorite podcast: La poudre.

Emotions in Everyday Life

What are emotions? How do they impact our everyday lives and how do our experiences shape how we feel? In this section of the course, students will learn about major theories of emotion in Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience, & Cognitive Science. We will weave together the abstract ideas we read about with engaging activities around campus. We will ask questions about how our thoughts, emotions, and our social environments shape our behavior. We will focus on the many ways humans act and interact with each other in an interactive social world. The interplay between the theory and practice will highlight how complex and rich our emotional experiences are. We will learn to question and explore how our theories of emotions play out in our everyday lives.

Faculty

Jay McKinney (they/them)

Jay McKinney (Ph. D. University of Cincinnati) explores how the mind, body, and environment interact to shape cognition. They teach classes on Artificial Intelligence, Embodied Cognitive Science, Buddhist Philosophy, and human-technology interaction. Their courses incorporate various tabletop roleplaying games, like Dialect or Wanderhome, to make theoretical and abstract concepts more tangible and accessible. Jay has two ongoing research projects that involve the cognitive dimensions of our everyday lives. The first involves investigating the ethics and context of AI and other emergent technologies. They have recently published an article to combat the influence of AI Hype on AI research and have an ongoing research project with students that identifies patterns in the ways we describe AI systems with cognitive abilities. The second research project investigates how the embodied practice of martial arts like Kyūdō – the Japanese martial art of archery – shape our cognitive experiences. Jay regularly hosts events for students on campus to foster an inclusive community. Outside of class, Jay is an avid fan of robots, Japanese culture, and playing all kinds of games.

The Psychology of Emotions

Emotions often feel abstract and amorphous–but that does not mean they cannot be studied scientifically. In this section of the course, we will examine emotion through the lens of psychological science. We will discuss the physiological and brain processes that characterize emotion; the social and evolutionary functions of emotion; and the subjective experiences of emotion, grounding our discussions in scientific evidence. Further, we will discuss evidence about how individuals may change their emotions through biological and psychological interventions; scientific debates about how emotions are defined, categorized, and understood; and the effects of emotions such as humor on relationship functioning. Broadly, the goal of this section is to understand how a scientific perspective can add to our understanding of what it means to be human.

Faculty

Emma McGorray

Emma McGorray (PhD, Northwestern University) is a social psychologist who teaches courses in psychology, interpersonal relationships, and LGBTQ+ identity. Her research examines the identities and relationship experiences of LGBTQ+ people and seeks to identify ways to make psychological research more reflective of our diverse society.