Joseph R. Metz, “The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke” – Tanner Humanities Center
Skip to content
About
About the Center
Our Team
Advisory Boards
Support the Center
Join our mailing list
News and Events
News
Center Events
National Theatre Live
Podcast: The Virtual Jewel Box
Tanner Book Club
How we watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Fellowships, research, and professional development
Fellowships
Current Fellows and Fellowship Events
Tanner Labs
Research Interest Groups
Gateway to Learning Workshops
Mormon Studies (mormon.utah.edu)
Search Site
Powered by the University of Utah
Powered by
Search Campus
Tanner Humanities Center
Home  Event  Joseph R. Metz, “The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke”
Joseph R. Metz, “The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke”
Date & Time:
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
12:00pm
Location: Jewel Box, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building
On/Off Campus: On Campus
Joseph R. Metz is Associate Professor, Department of World Languages and Cultures, and author of The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke.
Metz’s book examines the emergence of “empathy” from nineteenth-century German aesthetics. Moving from the 1873 coinage of Einfuehlung—the projection of human feeling into inanimate forms—Metz traces how this aesthetic concept migrated into psychology and ethics, reshaping how we imagine our relations to others, to art, and to the material world. Close readings of Georg Büchner, Adalbert Stifter, and Rainer Maria Rilke, uncover surprising links between aesthetic and interpersonal empathy. Metz also shows how these early debates anticipate contemporary questions in affect theory, AI, object-oriented ontology, and media aesthetics.
Views expressed in Tanner Humanities Center events do not represent the official position of the Center or the University of Utah.
Join our mailing list for more updates about Tanner Humanities Center events and programming.
Sponsors:
Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks
Get Tickets
Map
Similar Events
Cory Doctorow, author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It”
Tanner Talks and Conversations
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
7:00pm
Learn More
C. Thi Nguyen, “The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game”
Tanner Talks and Conversations
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
3:00pm
Learn More
Tanner Conversation with PAUL REEVE
Tanner Talks and Conversations
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Learn More
PREVIOUS POST
NEXT POST
About
About the Center
Our Team
Advisory Boards
Support the Center
Join our mailing list
Fellowships, research, and professional development
Fellowships
Current Fellows and Fellowship Events
Tanner Labs
Research Interest Groups
Gateway to Learning Workshops
Mormon Studies (mormon.utah.edu)
Tanner Humanities Center
Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building
215 S Central Campus Dr Rm 110
Salt Lake City UT 84112
801-581-7989
News and Events
News
Center Events
National Theatre Live
Podcast: The Virtual Jewel Box
Tanner Book Club
How we watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Centers and Programs in Humanities
American West Center
Asia Center
Environmental Humanities
International Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle East Center
Mormon Studies
Peace and Conflict Studies
Second Language Teaching and Research Center
Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center
© 2026 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Nondiscrimination & Accessibility
Disclaimer
Privacy
About the U
Media Contacts