澳大新語 • 2022 UMAGAZINE 25 49 人物專訪 • EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW melancholia, and depression. His forthcoming book, Positive Affects and Postcolonial Critique, attends instead to positive affects and emotions. ‘Positive affects and emotions are also essential in imagining alternative futures,’ says Prof De Chavez. In addition to affect theory, Prof De Chavez also recently turned to the study of Gothic literature in the Philippines. He feels fortunate to be mentored by many outstanding scholars in the field who work at the university. ‘I believe UM is one of the best places in the world to study Gothic Literature,’ he says. ‘Many excellent scholars of the Gothic like Bill Hughes, Matthew Gibson, Nick Groom, and Damian Shaw are here! So, I can get the mentorship that I need to be a successful scholar in this field.’ Inspired by these colleagues, Prof De Chavez is editing a book on Philippine Gothic literature, Archipelagothic: Studies in the Philippine Gothic, which is the first book on this topic. It will be published in September 2022. Expanding Students’ Minds with Music Prof De Chavez currently teaches an undergraduate course, ‘Introduction to Literary Criticism’, and a postgraduate course, ‘Critical Reading’. When he teaches English poetry-related content, he sometimes brings his viola to the classroom and uses music to elaborate on an idea. ‘When we listen to music, we know instantly whether we like it or not, so music is one of the most “accessible” forms of art,’ he says. ‘Different art forms can be placed in conversation with each other, so I try to use music to teach literature.’ Prof De Chavez also teaches two general education courses, namely ‘Creativity and Writing: English for a Global Readership’ and ‘Sex and the Arts’. He has played a piece of Bach’s Cello Suite No 1 in G major (Sarabande) in one of his ‘Sex and the Arts’ classes to help his students get closer to the arts and feel the emotions expressed through the music. ‘To think outside the Bachs (box), that’s what I would like my students to learn,’ he explains. own experience. When the film Jurassic Park was released in 1993, De Chavez, then a young boy and a dinosaur fanatic, was immediately captivated. He devoured all the dinosaur-related books in the library after school. ‘The movie inspired my passion for dinosaurs and I was very curious about everything related to them,’ he says. ‘It was wonder and curiosity that keep me learning.’ The parents of De Chavez encouraged him to learn Chinese when he was young. He enrolled in a Chinese language course and his teacher gave him a Chinese name ‘Lu Jie’, which was based on his English name. However, he found Chinese very difficult to learn, so he gave up after a short time. After coming to Macao, however, he realised that he needed to be able to speak at least a little Chinese in his daily life, which rekindled his interest in learning the language. So he enrolled in a Mandarin course offered by the UM Confucius Institute in the 2019/2020 academic year. By the time he completed the course, Prof De Chavez’s Chinese had improved greatly. At the graduation ceremony, he was able to recite Li Bai’s Do Drink Wine fluently. Prof De Chavez’s curiosity led him into the world of Chinese literature, and his motivation to learn has had an impact on his students. Affect Theory and Global Anglophone Literature Prof De Chavez’s research and teaching areas include affect studies, post-colonial studies, global Anglophone literature, and critical/cultural theory. He believes that affects plays an important role in literary studies. ‘There was a period in the history of literary criticism when a group of critics thought that how one felt towards a particular work had nothing to do with its legitimate or valid interpretation; that is to say, feelings and emotions are inconsequential, even detrimental, to literary interpretation—this idea usually goes by the name “affective fallacy”. Affect theory challenges this idea and argues for the importance of affects, emotions, and feelings,’ he explains. Prof De Chavez primarily studies works penned by post-colonial writers, and they often discuss how colonialism completely altered the cultural landscape of their country, its economy, and its politics. Prof De Chavez explains that the affect theorists who study those works overwhelmingly focus on negative affects and emotions, such as anger, fear, 掃二維碼 觀看訪談片段 Scan the QR code to watch the interview
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ1NDU2Ng==