At the Umeå conference on the cultural history of emotions in pre-modernity in 2008, one of the frequently recurring themes was the desire for a new grand narrative of the history of emotions. After historians’ criticism of Norbert Elias’ influential model of the civilizing process, a new framework for the explanation of the historical change of … Continue reading »
I just discovered a new online journal on the history and theory of the emotions called Passions in Context. It is a peer-reviewed journal that presents contributions from a variety of disciplines in English and German, and which was first published in the spring of 2010. Th[e] growing interest in the history and theory of … Continue reading »
At VU University Amsterdam, we have recently opened a new centre for the cross-disciplinary study of the emotions and senses, ACCESS for short. The centre is the initiative of cultural historians (myself included) and an anthropologist. We hope to bring together academics from many more disciplines to exchange ideas on the study of the emotions … Continue reading »
Disssertation Reviews is a new website that publishes friendly, non-critical reviews of unpublished dissertations, to give an immediate insight into new developments in scholarship. They used to focus on Chinese, Japanese and Korean Studies, but have recently branched out into “Science Studies” and are seeking editors to cover more fields in the humanities and social … Continue reading »
This interdisciplinary symposium brings together three scientists who explore the transmission of emotions from different disciplinary perspectives: neurology, social psychology and psycholinguistics. Their lectures will introduce current knowledge of the transmission of emotion in these three fields. The symposium seeks to encourage interdisciplinary exchange on this broad-ranging topic so fundamental to understanding human interaction. Continue reading »
The conference ‘Cool, Calm and Collected’ aims to enhance the burgeoning history of emotions in the Netherlands. Speakers at the conference will present their current research, integrating the study of emotional standards in advice literature with the study of actual emotional practices in ego documents, chronicles or archival sources. Continue reading »
I am in Istanbul at the second conference on the Cultural History of Emotions in Pre-Modernity (the first was in Umeå, Sweden, in 2008). A very broad range of historians of science and medicine, literary, legal, cultural historians and anthropologists have met here to discuss the cultural history of emotions up to and including the … Continue reading »
This mysterious and beautiful book sculpture was found in an Edinburgh library. To read the note that came with it and see more wonderful works left at other libraries by the same artist, see Tales from an Open Book.
Kathleen Woodward, Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of the Emotions (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009). Some time ago, I switched our car insurance over to a different company. After a week, the new company mistakenly and quite spontaneously cancelled my policy. I called them to ask what happened, and was told that I had … Continue reading »
In my previous post, I wondered whether we should we defend the humanities in terms of their value — even non-economic value, or whether we would then be adjusting ourselves to the neo-liberal view of academia that has become prevalent. I turned to the ideas of Stefan Collini, historian at Cambridge Universitybecause of a quotation in … Continue reading »
