Shame is the most intensely social and deeply intimate of emotions. A crucial ingredient in all social interactions and central to how we construct our self (always living in the minds of other people, per Cooley and Goffman), shame is also a protean emotion, found in so many shapes and contexts across cultures and societies that all of us have encountered it in our work at some point.

Hence, the next meeting will be a bit different. We will start with a series of 3-5-minute interventions (volunteers welcome!), each sharing an excerpt/episode from their sources or informants that they found intriguing, puzzling, or just funny. The central topic is shame in all its forms and linkages (embarrassment, humiliation, violence, honour, respect etc.). There will be a lot to learn from each other, and it will make for a more dynamic experience.

Reading: Thomas J. Scheff, ‘Looking Glass Selves: The Cooley/Goffman Conjecture’, (paper given at the American Sociological Association’s 98th meeting, 2003)

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This event is organized within Emotions Through History Research Group in the framework of the Grammars of Emotion: Shame and the Social Economy of Honour in Medieval Heroic Literatures research project supported by Romania’s Recovery and Resilience Plan | Ministry of European Investment and Projects – Government of Romania | #NextGenerationEU – European Union (Postdoctoral Research PNRR-III-C9-2022 – I9) and hosted by New Europe College.