Boredom 2:30pm to 4:30pm, Saturday, April 21st, 2018 Past Event Watch the video » Schopenhauer described boredom as “a tame longing without any particular object,” Dostoevsky as “ a bestial and indefinable affliction,” and poet Joseph Brodsky as “time’s invasion of your world system.” Unsurprisingly, not many can describe boredom even though most have felt it, and it is one of the central preoccupations of the age. The most current definition comes from John Eastwood in Toronto: Drawing from research across many areas of psychological science and neuroscience, Eastwood and colleagues define boredom as “an aversive state of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity,” which arises from failures in one of the brain’s attention networks. Interestingly, people who investigate boredom, find it thus: “Boredom is a blast! To a curious and creative scholar, nothing is ever too trivial.”(Maureen Corrigan re Patricia Meyer Spacks’ book of that name) And, “Peter Toohey “finds a perverse kind of glee in his subject.” (Daily Telegraph) Curiously the subject seems to ingivorate those who study it. We hope that this roundtable will, in bringing together scholars from literature, psychiatry, neurology, cultural history, and the law who have thought deeply about the subject, continue the exploration of the meaning and characteristics of boredom, and in so doing give the audience a chance to enlarge their own ideas. Participants: John Eastwood Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, York University John Eastwood, a registered Clinical Psychologist, holds an academic appointment at York University in Toronto Canada as an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology where he trains future psychologists and conducts research on the intersection between cognition and emotion. He has examined how attention is allocated to affective and socially relevant information, the influence of mood… read more » Jacqueline Gottlieb Jacqueline Gottlieb is Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind Brain and Behavior at Columbia University. She completed her education at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and the National Institute of Health, and she joined the Columbia Faculty in 2001. Dr Gottlieb… read more » Gerald Hurowitz Associate Director, The Helix Center Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center Gerald Hurowitz is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and on faculty for the past 30 years at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He has a full-time clinical practice in psychopharmacology and neuropsychiatry in New York City. Dr. Hurowitz is a founder and Chief Medical Officer at M3 Information, an information technology company that… read more » Mark Polizzotti Author, Director of the Publications Program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, and Raymond Roussel. A Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the recipient of a 2016 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he is the author of… read more » Josefa Ros Velasco Dr. Josefa Ros Velasco is Associate in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow. She is conducting a multidisciplinary research on the evolutionary role of boredom from a philosophical-anthropological point of view to argue against the spread understanding of boredom as a pathological personality… read more »
John Eastwood Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, York University John Eastwood, a registered Clinical Psychologist, holds an academic appointment at York University in Toronto Canada as an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology where he trains future psychologists and conducts research on the intersection between cognition and emotion. He has examined how attention is allocated to affective and socially relevant information, the influence of mood… read more »
Jacqueline Gottlieb Jacqueline Gottlieb is Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind Brain and Behavior at Columbia University. She completed her education at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and the National Institute of Health, and she joined the Columbia Faculty in 2001. Dr Gottlieb… read more »
Gerald Hurowitz Associate Director, The Helix Center Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center Gerald Hurowitz is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and on faculty for the past 30 years at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He has a full-time clinical practice in psychopharmacology and neuropsychiatry in New York City. Dr. Hurowitz is a founder and Chief Medical Officer at M3 Information, an information technology company that… read more »
Mark Polizzotti Author, Director of the Publications Program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, and Raymond Roussel. A Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the recipient of a 2016 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he is the author of… read more »
Josefa Ros Velasco Dr. Josefa Ros Velasco is Associate in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow. She is conducting a multidisciplinary research on the evolutionary role of boredom from a philosophical-anthropological point of view to argue against the spread understanding of boredom as a pathological personality… read more »
Hi, I have been doing research on mindfulness and boredom with a student in Hong Kong, and we are eager to watch this – but it’s 2:30 a.m. in Hong Kong. Will it be possible to watch this on YouTube afterwards? Thanks! Reply