Guest Lecturer: Fritz Breithaupt, Professor of German, Director of the Experimental Humanities Lab- University of Pennsylvania

Once Is Never Enough

What is an experience? While we often think of experiences as past, present, or future, the talk offers a new framework: experiences as firsts, repetitions, and those imagined experiences that we have not yet had, perhaps never will have, but which guide us like few actual events. For all of these, experiences do not simply happen to us. Rather, we actively transform external events into experiences that matter. We make experiences. This making of experiences involves a range of techniques known from narrative processing. As the talk will propose, we have six cognitive acts at our disposal that shape experiences. The investigation will include cases from fiction (Goethe), life stories, and accounts from the Kinsey Institute.