Organization: Ulla Haselstein, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Catrin Gersdorf and Elena Giannoulis

November 12-13, 2010

Be it as an emotional quality of a globalized youth culture or as an aesthetic concept, coolness and other forms of affect control differ vastly in their respective social and cultural contextualization. Experts from various fields – American Studies and Japanese Studies, Classics, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Sociology – discuss the allure of cool and compare the application of different disciplinary models in the analysis of this phenomenon.

Program

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Friday November 12, 2010

Welcome

Ulla Haselstein – FU Berlin, Germany and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit – FU Berlin, Germany

Cool Capitalism at Work

Jim McGuigan – Loughborough University, UK

Cultural Variation in Emotion Experience: A Psychological Perspective

Hazel Markus – Stanford University, U.S.A

Emotionally Challenged, Wisely Detached, or Incredibly Cool? On Stoic Apathy

Catherine Newmark – FU Berlin, Germany

Were the Romans Cool?

Daniel Selden – University of California, Santa Cruz, U.S.A.

Iki – A Japanese Concept of "Coolness"

Elena Giannoulis – FU Berlin, Germany

Cold Norms and Warm Hearts. On the Conception of Etiquette Rules in Advice Books from Early Modern and Modern Japan

Michael Kinski – Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Yoshiyuki Rie and the Reorientation of Emotion in 1970s Japan

Paul Roquet – University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.

Saturday November 13, 2010

Coolness and the Poetics of Abolitionism

Catrin Gersdorf – FU Berlin, Germany

The Mask of Cool in Postwar Jazz and Film Noir

Joel Dinerstein – Tulane University, U.S.A.

The Audacity of Cool: Barack Obama and the Politics of Self-Possession

Jelani Cobb – Rutgers University, U.S.A.

The Cool Kawaii

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein – Gulf University, Kuwait

National and Self Appearances: Cute and Cool in J-Culture

Aviad Raz – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva, Israel

Hot and Cold: Interpreting Japanese Culture

Jens Heise – Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany

Concluding Comments

Helmut Lethen – International Research Center for Cultural Studies Vienna, Austria

Concluding Remarks

Ulla Haselstein – FU Berlin, Germany and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit – FU Berlin, Germany