Psychomotor Aesthetics

Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film

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by Ana Hedberg Olenina

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Russia / USSR
Keywords: Russia, avant-garde, early cinema, movement
Publishing date: 2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 416 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-005126-6

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Book Presentation:
• Examines notions of expressive movement and kinesthetic empathy in Russian avant-garde film and literature
• Historicizes the relationship between psychophysiology and the arts in early 20th-century Russia, revealing a dialog between Russian, European, and American sources
• Provides a critical evaluation of Modernist authors responses to psychophysiology and psychotechnics, with implications for todays neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics

In the late 19th century, modern psychology emerged as a discipline, shaking off metaphysical notions of the soul in favor of a more scientific, neurophysiological concept of the mind. Laboratories began to introduce instruments and procedures which examined bodily markers of psychological experiences, like muscle contractions and changes in vital signs. Along with these changes in the scientific realm came a newfound interest in physiological psychology within the arts - particularly with the new perception of artwork as stimuli, able to induce specific affective experiences.

In Psychomotor Aesthetics, author Ana Hedberg Olenina explores the effects of physiological psychology on art at the turn of the 20th century. The book explores its influence on not only art scholars and theorists, wishing to understand the relationship between artistic experience and the internal processes of the mind, but also cultural producers more widely. Actors incorporated psychology into their film acting techniques, the Russian and American film industries started to evaluate audience members' physical reactions, and literary scholars began investigations into poets' and performers' articulation. Yet also looming over this newly emergent field were commercial advertisers and politicians, eager to use psychology to further their own mass appeal and assert control over audiences. Drawing from archival documents and a variety of cross-disciplinary sources, Psychomotor Aesthetics calls attention to the cultural resonance of theories behind emotional and cognitive experience - theories with implications for today's neuroaesthetics and neuromarketing.

About the Author:
Ana Hedberg Olenina, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies, Arizona State University Ana Hedberg Olenina is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Arizona State University.

Press Reviews:
Winner, Best First Book, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Winner of the 2021 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic Studies, East European, and Eurasian Studies

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

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