Seminars

Seminars

More-than-human archives: a queer perspective

Professor of Modern Literature and Cultural History, Birbeck, University of London

What is the significance of non-human animals in modern queer culture? The talk introduces some of the cats and dogs that roamed queer modernity – such as the Old English Sheepdogs of composer Ethel Smyth or the cats of artist Claude Cahun – to consider afresh the material and affective contours of the queer past. It focuses on the early twentieth century, a transformative moment in LGBTQI+ history when a modern way of thinking and living ‘sex’ – understood in terms of gender, sexual desire, the body and a sense of self – gained traction. This was also a transformative time for human-animal relations, as pedigree dog and cat cultures, along with related pet fashions, gained significant popularity. The talk brings these histories into proximity. Examining a selection of pet portraits, it aims to problematize ideas about love and companionship and, in doing so, expand debates about the possibilities and limits of queer archives beyond the human.

Describing, expressing and provoking emotion in political discourse: What can corpus linguistics contribute?

Ruth Breeze

Professor, Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, University of Navarra

This paper examines the applications of corpus linguistics in researching emotion in language and explores some recent examples in political discourse. Starting from current theories of emotion/affect in psychology, I will look at how emotions are classified. I will then explore how these emotions can be identified in discourse, using various quantitative approaches (sentiment and semantic analysis, corpus linguistics). My talk will then focus on a series of examples from the UK, Germany, Spain and the USA, showing how emotions are represented, invoked and exploited by political figures, particularly those considered “populist”. Examples will illustrate the key contrast between anger and fear: while fear can be mobilised to support the status quo, politicians invoke anger and condone violence in order to spur radical change. Other examples will show how positive emotions associated with in-group identity are harnessed by political leaders to widen dichotomies. I will conclude by suggesting some ways in which corpus linguistics can be combined with discourse analytical methodologies in this context.

Feeling My Way through the Archives: A Journey in Queer Method

Ann Cvetkovich

Professor Emeritus, Carleton University

The talk and the seminar will draw from my book in progress, which chronicles the recent proliferation of LGBTQ archives as a point of departure for a broader inquiry into the power of archives to transform public histories. The push for LGBTQ state recognition, civil rights, and cultural visibility has been accompanied by a desire for the archive – a claim that the recording and preservation of LGBTQ history is an epistemic right. Yet new LGBTQ archival projects must also respond to historical and theoretical critiques, including decolonizing ones, that represent archives as forms of epistemological domination and surveillance or as guided by an impossible desire for stable knowledge.

I address these tensions through case histories of actual archives, as well as projects by artists whose creative and queer approaches to the archives are simultaneously critical and transformative. Today’s talk will focus on how my research in archival collections has been inspired by artists whose experiments in archival preservation and innovative media practices grapple with the materiality of the archive in order to reveal its ephemeral and affective dimensions.

What KGB Archives Reveal About the Holodomor?

Andrey Kohut

Director of Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine

This workshop examines the methodological challenges of working with Soviet secret police archives that document the 1932-1933 Holodomor and decades-long KGB activity aimed at concealing the famine, suppressing memory, and conducting active measures against diaspora recognition campaigns. Based on research reconceptualising GPU repressions as a mass operation integral to genocidal policy, participants analyse KGB archival materials spanning from the famine to memory politics. Through collaborative analysis of operational bulletins, statistical reports, directives, and criminal case files, we examine how fragmented and manipulated sources can simultaneously reveal mechanisms of state terror while obscuring them. The workshop develops critical reading strategies for documents produced by repressive apparatus and addresses the issue of archival destruction as evidence. How do we confront intentional gaps in the record? What does absence reveal? How does it shape historical interpretation? Suitable for humanities doctoral students, this seminar provides methodological tools for working with archives of communist security services.

How Many Kinds of Affect Theory?

Donovan Schaefer

Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania

It is well-known that affect theory is multiple. But how multiple is it? This seminar will begin with a lecture that provides a new way of categorising affect theory into a typology of six distinct conceptual strands. In the discussion that follows, participants will consider whether "affect theory" is, in fact, a unified field in the first place and explore the utility of different paradigms for various contexts.

Text mining, or how to read lots of texts with no time

Maciej Eder

Visiting Professor in Digital Humanities, University of Tartu

The hands-on seminar (part II) will introduce the participants to the topic modelling methodology. To this end, we will use the programming language R, together with a few R libraries for text mining and topic modelling. A typical scenario involving the conversion of texts to their lemmatised version, chunking, removing stopwords, and training a topic model will be discussed. A set of ready-to-use scripts in R will be provided; therefore, no programming skills are required/expected.

Artistic research with sensitive archives: Insights into artist–researcher collaboration from the Art or Science exhibition project

Linda Kaljundi

Professor of Cultural History, Estonian Academy of Arts

Kristina Norman

artist

This seminar departs from our shared collaborative experience of working with sensitive archives, explored in connection with the larger exhibition and research project Art or Science (Kumu Art Museum, University of Tartu Museum, Estonian Academy of Arts; 2021–2024). In mapping, for the first time, scientific illustrations held in Estonian collections—focusing primarily on the long nineteenth century and on scientific collections formed within Russian imperial contexts—researchers and artists encountered several challenges. How should one work through and exhibit (if at all) materials connected to structural racial, social, and gendered violence and inequality? How can colonial amnesia be addressed?

Drawing on concrete examples, we discuss how artistic research and artist–researcher collaboration can offer tools for engaging with collections, shaping research questions and agendas, and finding approaches to representing and exhibiting sensitive materials.

Affect and (Audio)visual Traces of the Past in Estonian Film Archive

Eneken Laanes

Hanna Aunin

The seminar explores the historical footage and photography of the Stalinist period, dealing with the Second World War and the Holocaust in Estonia from the Estonian Film Archive, to analyse how newsreels, film chronicles and photos create an affective collective memory of the past, the aim of which was to legitimise the Soviet regime in Estonia. How can such historical footage and photography function as a multifaceted trace of the past? How is affect created in these documentary artefacts, and what is it mobilised for?

Digital memory: Intimate demons and the uncanny archive

Maarja Ojamaa

Associate Professor of Semiotics, University of Tartu

Our point of departure will be Silvana Mandolessi's (2023) chapter "Is digital memory our new demon? Notes on surveillance and vulnerability," which provocatively reframes our relationship with digital technology. Building on her insights, we'll explore emerging research frontiers at the intersection of digital media and memory studies. We aim to move beyond the familiar tropes of surveillance to instead pose questions of affect, intimacy, and the uncanny, including:

- In what ways does digital memory "possess" us, shaping our subjectivities and vulnerabilities?
- How can we theorise the affective rifts caused by our digital doppelgängers (digital traces)?
- How does the "intimate uncanny" of digital memory reshape private lives and familial archives?
- What happens when algorithms resurrect forgotten relationships, past traumas or other material that fractures our sense of a coherent self?

Required reading: Mandolessi, Silvana 2023. Is digital memory our new demon? Notes on surveillance and vulnerability. In: Kirsch, Thomas G; Mahlke, Kirsten; van Dijk, Rijk (eds.), Domestic Demons and the Intimate Uncanny. London and New York: Routledge.

Recommended watching: "Black Mirror" series episode "The Entire History of You" (season 1, episode 3).

NKVD Interrogation Reports as Affective Historical Sources

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

Professor of Archival Studies, University of Tartu

The 1940s and 1950s are one of the most turbulent periods in the history of Estonia, as well as for other Baltic and Eastern European countries. The Sovietization of society meant dismantling the statehood of the independence era, imposing control over all spheres of life, and neutralising the spiritual resilience of the population. The re-education of people into “Soviet citizens” involved various components, from an overwhelming sense of fear to coaxing people into cooperation.

In 1940–41 and 1944–53, tens of thousands of people were arrested and accused of anti-Soviet activities or sentiments. During interrogations following their arrest, detainees were required to testify about their own and others’ “crimes,” the content and meaning of which often remained incomprehensible to the accused. The charges ranged from actual armed resistance to imaginary acts – often fabricated by the authorities themselves –largely reflecting a clash between two different worlds. These “crimes” seem even more bizarre today to those who have never encountered Soviet society.

In the workshop held at the National Archives, we will examine the contents and peculiarities of NKVD personal files (questionnaires, interrogation protocols, various testimonies and pieces of evidence, etc.). This is one of the most problematic types of source material, the use of which requires specific skills, extensive reading, and knowledge of the phenomena characteristic of that era.

Museums as Affective and Dialogical Archives in Practice

Kirsti Jõesalu

Research Fellow in Ethnology, University of Tartu

Aljona Suržikova

filmmaker, documentary maker

This seminar examines how museums can function as affective and dialogical archives by incorporating multiple and sometimes conflicting memories into their curatorial practices. Taking RAZREZ (The Mine)—a recent addition to the permanent exhibition "Encounters" at the Estonian National Museum—as a case study, the session examines how curating stories from the post-industrial region of Ida-Virumaa opens up space for negotiating complex identities, emotions, and memories. Developed through fieldwork and collaboration, RAZREZ engages with the metaphor of a “mine” both literally, as an open-cast mining landscape, and symbolically, as a site of social and cultural division. Through this example, participants will discuss how research-based curatorial practices can reimagine the museum as a space for pluralism of memory, affective engagement, and creative reinterpretation of the past.

Contacts of organizer

winterschool2026@ut.ee

The Winter School is organised by the Estonian Doctoral School for Humanities and Arts. The event is supported by the Project "Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies" (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) and co-funded by the European Union.