Guest lecture: A Temporal Reading of Affective Attachments: A Suggested Research Agenda

Abstract:

The main aspiration of this lecture is to discuss the utility of time studies to scholars interested in the affective dimensions of intimate life. Critical works on time recognize its powerful force in producing storylines, values, as well as various forms of evaluations and measurements. By doing so, they underscore the importance of questioning everyday workings of socio-temporal templates, and how these underpin conventional thought habits, social practices, and everyday interactions. I draw on insights from my own studies on singlehood and women’s friendships in order to offer a re-conceptualisation of intimate attachments through the lens of temporality. The lecture will address questions concerning the affective dimensions of time and discuss how temporality constructs our affective selves, demarcates and mediates temporal boundaries. To accomplish this, I will discuss how exploring temporal tropes such as waiting, synchronicity, wasting/accumulating time, access to time – [to name but a few]- can shed light on the temporal messiness of affective encounters and the temporal imaginary of intimate relations.

The lecture is followed by a commentary by Professor Susanna Paasonen 

Bio:

Dr. Kinneret Lahad is Senior Lecturer of NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

My research interests are interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of gender studies, sociology and cultural studies. I have been involved in various prestigious research projects, which merited international attention, praise, and materialized in publications in leading journals. My open access book A Table for One: A critical reading of singlehood, gender and time was published by Manchester University Press in 2017. In the book, I juxtapose two theoretical fields that are rarely linked: the social study of time and the study of female singlehood. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book opens up possibilities for a new theorization of female singlehood and social time, lines of inquiry which are relatively under-theorized and under-incorporated into social and feminist research and critical studies in general.

My publications also appeared in Journals as Cultural Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Israeli Sociology, Nora: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Sociology, Sociological Forum, Time and Society, Sociological Research Online, Theory and Criticism and Society and Women’s Studies International Forum.

My current projects include independent and collaborative studies on aunthood, friendships, time and temporality, emotions and affects, solo marriages and rental families in Japan. I have been a visiting scholar at Columbia University, a visiting scholar and lecturer at Venice International University, a visiting lecturer at the Master MIM Erasmus Mundus Graduate program at Ca ‘Foscari University in Venice, an honorary research fellow at Manchester University and an Erasmus visiting scholar at Aarhus University and Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich).

Lahad will visit Tampere University as part of the international workshop Affective Intimacies to be held at Tampere University 18-19 November, 2019.

For more information, please contact: affective.inequalities [at] tuni.fi 

Welcome! The lecture is free and open to the public.