GRF Sara led a very nice seminar this Wednesday on her graduate English research on melancholy. Whenever someone is presenting on a topic they have explored in depth, there is the potential to be overly technical or to over-simplify the subject. Sara did not fall into either of these traps and instead did a fantastic job of effectively explaining her work to the wide range of undergraduate majors in attendance. She went into sufficient detail to bring out the interesting and intriguing aspects of her research but was also conscientious to make sure that those of us who haven’t studied English in the classroom setting for a while (myself included) were given the proper background to follow her discussion.

My favorite aspect of Sara’s talk was how her exploration of melancholy has led her to explore a large variety of sources such as literature (Shakespeare’s Hamlet), film (Hitchcock’s Vertigo), history, phycology, and even anatomy! She explained to us that melancholy is associated with back bile, the autumn season, the concept of the tortured, prolific artist, and literary characters and it was interesting to draw connections between all these disparate concepts and to see how they all combine to define the mood or condition of melancholia. Sara’s point that melancholy is also linked with positive things such as artistic creation and love was also particularly insightful.

Melancholy, 1894 by Edvard Munch