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College of Arts + Sciences

Cultural Studies Program

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  • Hannah Zeavin

OCCULT NATURES: Hannah Zeavin

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

The Bishop Bar
123 S Walnut St, Bloomington
Dr. Hannah Zeavin, Indiana University-Bloomington

"The Cult and Occult of Psychoanalysis"

"The Cult and the Occult examines Freud's complex relationship to occult forms of communication, or "thought transference," as he was establishing his discipline and its theory of transference. After examining the historical religious antecedes for Freud's nascent theory, I turn to a failed séance that Freud held in his own apartment. I argue that Freud's envy and anxieties surrounding telepathy and mind-reading are continuous with his concerns about the presence of media and communication technology in the psychoanalytic scenario. After demonstrating that psychoanalysis has traditionally ignored the presence of such media, or relegated them to the realm of mere metaphor, the paper argues for a double revision of thinking of psychoanalysis and mediated and as a secular occult practice."

Please join us for the Spring 2023 "Occult Natures" series with Cultural Studies!

 

Hannah Zeavin is a scholar, writer, and editor. She is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University and the Founding Editor of Parapraxis and the co-director of The Psychosocial Foundation. Her first book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy was published by The MIT Press in 2021, and she is currently at work on her second book, Mother's Little Helpers: Media, Childminding, and the American Family.

Series Description

Magic is everywhere. From sage smudging witches to the sorcery schools of young adult fantasy series, magic makes up a significant part of contemporary culture and yet has no theory of its own. This lecture series will engage a range of topics in the esoteric and the occult with the intention of developing a platform for occultural studies in the humanities.

Our theme sets in motion a range of ostensibly opposed concepts: science and religion, the material and the immaterial, fact and fabulation, spirituality and sexuality. Engaging scholars, artists, and practitioners in an examination of these binary terms, we continue the critique of nature as a timeless given undertaken by feminists, ecocritics, and science studies scholars for several decades, but with particular attention to the recent wave of scholars of color for whom the distinction between science and its folk opposites is itself a mythological construction and a prop for coloniality. Topics in this series move in several ways through the undoing of these binaries: by taking seriously the variety of esoteric sciences as modes of knowledge-production and world-making; by considering the occult dimensions of nature, or what might emerge by approaching nature aesthetically, affectively, spiritually, supernaturally, or from what Sylvia Wynter calls the “demonic grounds” of practices marginal to the formal sciences; and finally by looking at the weirdness of science-itself, its own occulted aspects. All lectures will take place on Wednesday afternoons at Bishop Bar.

Cultural Studies Program

Indiana University Bloomington
Ballantine Hall 416
Bloomington, IN 47405

cstudies@indiana.edu

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  • Program Overview
  • People
    • Affiliate Faculty
    • Emeriti Faculty
    • Administration
    • Faculty Advisory Committee
  • Courses
    • Archived Courses
      • Spring 2014 Courses
      • Fall 2014 Courses
      • Spring 2015 Courses
      • Fall 2015 Courses
      • Spring 2016 Courses
      • Fall 2016 Courses
      • Sprint 2017 Courses
      • Fall 2017 Courses
      • Spring 2018 Courses
      • Fall 2018 Courses
      • Spring 2019 Courses
      • Fall 2019 Courses
      • Spring 2020 Courses
      • Fall 2020 Courses
      • Courses
      • Spring 2022 Courses
      • Fall 2022 Courses
      • Fall 2021 Courses
  • Ph.D. Minor
    • C790: Independent Readings
    • Cultural Studies Minor Declaration
    • Cultural Studies Minor Verification
    • Travel Funding Opportunities
    • Graduate Essay Prize
  • Lecture Series
  • News & Events
    • Archived Conferences
      • 2017 Conference
      • 2016 Conference
      • 2018 Conference
      • 2015 Conference
      • 2014 Conference
      • 2013 Conference
    • Past Events
  • Newsletters
    • Newletter Frontpage
  • Contact Us