Feel!: An Account of Emotion
Ananda Griffin (Philosophy, Philosophy, UConn)
with a response by Daniel Adler (Anthropology, UConn)
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)
The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.
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In her 1984 speech “The Uses of Anger,” Audre Lorde describes anger as “a grief of distortions between peers” and “loaded with information and energy.” The goal of this project is to take her and other Black feminists’ claims about emotion seriously and place them in conversation with current philosophical and psychological discourses on the topic. “Feel: An Account of Emotion” argues that emotions have elements of feeling, evaluation, and motivation. Current debates argue that emotion is primarily or merely one of these things, while Black feminists often argue that emotion is more than a plot for action, a judgement, or a bodily sensation alone. “Feel!” argues that the experience of an emotion entails the brain tracking a feeling in the body, associating the sensation to past instances of it, while also prioritizing and/or deprioritizing certain sorts of action. This project introduces the concept of an affective scheme: a frame based on our associations with a given context and feeling through which we interpret events that also guides emotional (in)action. Importantly, affective schemes are, in part, formed by our upbringings, peers, and socio-political contexts; they emphasize the interconnectedness of our emotions. “Feel!” adds to the chorus of Black feminist philosophers of emotion, providing a new framework with which to think about the layers of emotional experience.
Ananda Griffin is a 5th Year PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at UConn and a proud graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, Ananda’s dissertation is titled, “What We Learn from Tears and Laughter: An Account of Emotion as an Epistemic Resource,” which explores the ways that emotion helps us understand the world around us. Ananda argues that emotion plays two important epistemic roles: allowing us to make meaning of the world around us and motivating the pursuit of knowledge. Additionally, the dissertation analyzes the harms that arise from the denial of emotion’s epistemic impact. Ananda shows the ways that affective injustice, social practices that systemically invalidate certain people’s emotions, can sometimes function as an epistemic injustice, invalidating or ignoring a group’s knowledge on account of their identity. She argues that these injustices do not pass without resistance, using Black women of the Great Migration as key examples of epistemic and affective refusal. Ananda draws on Black Feminism, Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Social Epistemology, and other fields.
Daniel Adler is and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology with over 30 years experience investigating ancient human behaviors, cultures, and lifeways in Western Europe, the Middle East, and the south Caucasus. Since 1995 he has directed over 10 interdisciplinary archaeological projects in the republics of Georgia and Armenia spanning the last 2,000,000 to 20,000 years, with a primary focus on understanding Neanderthal-Modern Human interactions and what it means to be human. This work seeks to bridge the perceived behavioral and cognitive gaps between Neanderthals and ourselves, challenge traditional beliefs in our own uniqueness and question the validity of our sapiens-centric worldview, develop a deeper appreciation of Neanderthal resiliency and agency, and contribute to the ongoing restoration of Neanderthal humanity.
Access note
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