Gaze

with Daniel Pontillo and Chris Gratien

Human beings live their lives under a state of constant observation that is both perceived and real. Widespread folk traditions such as the notion of the "evil eye" (Turkish: nazar) reflect a belief in the profound power of the mere act of looking, which psychoanalysts such as Lacan have developed into theories of gaze (French: le regard) and the gaze effect that have gained resonance within the humanities and the social sciences. In this episode, Dan Pontillo joins us to discuss the gaze from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, the social sciences, and the scientific approaches of vision study and eye tracking.

	Daniel Pontillo is a doctoral student at University of Rochester studying brain and cognitive sciences (Linkedin)
	Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. (see academia.edu)

Episode No. 40
Release date: 31 December 2011

This is a thematic discussion and not a piece of original research. In addition to the authors and publications mentioned in the podcast, we recommend the following list for further reading.

Select Bibliography

Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques, Marie-Louise Mallet, and David Wills. The Animal That Therefore I Am. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: Orion Press, 1965.