1st Edition
Sources for the History of Emotions A Guide
Offering insights on the wide range of sources that are available from across the globe and throughout history for the study of the history of emotions, this book provides students with a handbook for beginning their own research within the field.
Divided into three parts, Sources for the History of Emotions begins by giving key starting points into the ethical, methodological and theoretical issues in the field. Part II shows how emotions historians have proved imaginative in their discovering and use of varied materials, considering such sources as rituals, relics and religious rhetoric, prescriptive literature, medicine, science and psychology, and fiction, while Part III offers introductions to some of the big or emerging topics in the field, including embodied emotions, comparative emotions, and intersectionality and emotion. Written by key scholars of emotions history, the book shows readers the ways in which different sources can be used to extract information about the history of emotions, highlighting the kind of data available and how it can be used in a field for which there is no convenient archive of sources.
The focused discussion of sources offered in this book, which not only builds on existing research, but encourages further efforts, makes it ideal reading and a key resource for all students of emotions history.
Part I: Introducing the history of emotions
1. Introduction: a guide to sources for the history of emotions
Katie Barclay, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Peter N. Stearns
2. Theories and methods in the history of emotions
Thomas Dodman
3. The practice and ethics of the history of emotions
Katie Barclay
Part II: Sources for the history of emotions
4. Rituals, relics and religious rhetoric
Piroska Nagy, Xavier Biron-Oullet and Anne-Gaëlle Weber
5. Prescriptive literature
Peter N. Stearns
6. Medicine, science and psychology
Rob Boddice
7. Legal records
Alecia Simmonds
8. Institutional records: a comment
Catharine Coleborne and Peter N. Stearns
9. Narratives of the self
Marcelo J. Borges
10. Emotions in fiction
Louise D’Arcens
11. Performing emotions
Alan Maddox
12. Visual sources
Sarah Hand Meacham
13. The material world
Sarah Randles
Part III: Emerging themes in the history of emotions
14. Comparative emotions
Joseph Ben Prestel
15. Intersectional identities
Katie Barclay and Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
16. Emotions of protest
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
17. Technology and feeling
Susan J. Matt and Luke Fernandez
18. Emotions and the body
Mark Neuendorf
19. Epilogue
Peter N. Stearns
Biography
Katie Barclay is Deputy-Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions and Associate Professor in History at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She writes on the history of emotions, family and gender, and with Andrew Lynch and Giovanni Taratino edits Emotions: History, Culture, Society.
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa is Associate Professor in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She writes on the history of emotions, gender, militancy and transnationalism, and her books include Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash and Remembering Women’s Activism. She is Deputy Editor of Women’s History Review.
Peter N. Stearns is University Professor of History at George Mason University, USA. He has written widely on the history of emotions, with books including American Cool and Shame: A Brief History. He regularly teaches an undergraduate course on emotions history, and has collaborated with a number of students on research projects in the field.
'This collection will doubtless become a core reference work, both for historians of the emotions, and scholars concerned with emotions more generally. It will be of huge value to students seeking to navigate this exciting field for research dissertations, as it places various source types in careful and critical scholarly context, without becoming esoteric in language or focus. The authors and editors have done a fine job. This book will be of immense practical use, and a stimulating intellectual resource, for all concerned with the emotions and their expression, in the discipline of history and beyond.'
Chris Millard, University of Sheffield, UK
