History Of Emotions Research Articles

Travelling memories, the afterlife of feelings, and associative diffraction in oral histories of Northern Irish migrants to Britain during the Troubles

ABSTRACT This article proposes an innovative analytical framework for understanding memory work in oral history interviews with migrants who experienced the Troubles in Northern Ireland before migrating to Britain. Integrating theories of diasporic subjectivity from migration studies with conceptual developments in oral history and current research on memory, temporality and the history of emotions, it focuses on transnational dynamics in ‘travelling memories’ of the Troubles brought to Britain by first-generation migrants; the long temporal ‘afterlife of feelings’ attached to conflict memories; and the process of ‘associative diffraction’ whereby chronologically sequential memories are interrupted, fragmented and recombined in achronological sequences linking diverse temporal moments and spatial locations. The utility of these concepts is explored in an intensive analysis of memory dynamics and subjectivity in a single interview, with Siobhán O’Neill, who grew up Catholic, working-class and queer in nationalist/republican West Belfast at the epicentre of conflict violence, and moved to London in 1986. The article argues that the specificities of individual migration stories such as Siobhán’s resist conventional generalisation, and offers a new theoretical and methodological framework for the systematic investigation of quotidian experiences, memories and silences that are unexplored in the established historiographies of the Troubles and the Irish diaspora in Britain.

Before Stockholm: Emotions and Victimhood in Mediterranean Kidnapping Narratives, 1866–1921

AbstractFifty years ago, the infamous bank robbery and ensuing hostage crisis that took place in a Stockholm bank gave rise to the so-called ‘Stockholm syndrome’. Though never recognized as a valid medical diagnosis, the (allegedly) pathological relationship between kidnapper and hostage has become an omnipresent media phenomenon that inspires movies and television series to this day. However, this forced bond was not always seen as problematic. The years between 1860 and 1910 witnessed the rise of kidnappings in the Mediterranean world (Southern Italy, Greece, the Ottoman Balkan region, and Morocco) involving English, American, and European hostages. Today, we know about these incidents from autobiographical narratives by the former captives. They painted a surprisingly favourable picture of their captors – and found enthusiastic audiences for their stories. Looking at the interplay of feelings, coercion, and empowerment, the article opens up a new perspective on the history of emotions that brings both victims and perpetrators into the picture.

Timescapes, subjectivity and emotions after the India–Tibet earthquake, 1950

Abstract Scholarship on historical temporality has explored what time meant to people in the past. Going further, how did historical actors’ perception of time shape their experience of events? Jean and Francis Kingdon-Ward, two British travellers, lived through a major earthquake on India and Tibet’s mountainous frontier in 1950. Their numerous published and unpublished narrative accounts showed that the earthquake severely disrupted their physical environment, inducing powerful emotions and changing their sense of the passage of time. Comparisons with other accounts by British and some Indian survivors of mid twentieth-century earthquakes in South Asia showed that others, too, felt that earthquakes disrupted their sense of linear, well-ordered time. This article develops Barbara Adam’s concept of timescapes to emphasize how a temporal subject-position is made up of feelings and thoughts. It draws on psychological research on the relationship between emotion and time-perception to reveal a temporal subjectivity that extended through and beyond a moment of extreme stress, and was closely connected to place. New insights are offered for scholarship on the histories of emotions, subjectivity and the environment, putting emotions more firmly into our understanding of historical time.

Books: The History of Emotions: A Very Short Introduction: How to think about emotions.

Books: The History of Emotions: A Very Short Introduction: How to think about emotions.

Safety between the lines – the role, meaning and practice of pen-pal writing in the life of a young Finnish evacuee girl (1939–1945)

ABSTRACT This article examines the role, meaning, and practice of letter writing in the lives of two Finnish girls during the Second World War (WWII). We use a particular set of letters (N = 41) from the wartime letter collection kept in the Tampere University Folklife Archives and argue that they give us an interesting perspective on not only the girls’ wartime experiences, but also on the role of communication and pen-pal writing in everyday life. In particular, we focus on one evacuee – Ritva – who during the period 1939–1945 changed class six times, requiring her to constantly adapt to new class environments and peer relationships. However, from 1942 onwards, the correspondence with her pen pal Ella provided Ritva with a sense of continuous friendship free from the pressures of local peers. We suggest that pen-pal writing formed an arena of communication which allowed the two girls to share experiences, nurture mutual feelings, and give each other support – elements which might have sometimes been lacking in relationships they had locally with adults and peers at this time. In theoretical terms, this article is inspired by approaches from the history of experiences and history of emotions. These provide useful concepts for pinpointing the historical and cultural layers involved in the social process of cultivating a pen-pal correspondence.

Memory, Trauma and ‘Affective Autonomy’: Displaying Emotion and Trauma at the International Slavery Museum

ABSTRACT This article attempts to answer the question of how museums might communicate the affective experience of enslavement, and the history of emotions and slavery, to their audiences. By using the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool as its case study, it answers this question through examining how the museum uses contemporary art in dialogue with archives of historical and modern slavery to make an affective investment in the lives of enslaved peoples. I name this approach ‘Affective Autonomy’, as it uses affect to underscore the agency of enslaved peoples to have complex emotional engagements with their experience of captivity. The International Slavery Museums uses contemporary art not to fill in the silences of the archive but to articulate them. It does so by using these artworks as entry points into discussions about the experience of modern slavery, which frame the emotional experience of slavery during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The experience of modern slavery is understood through references to transatlantic slavery. Consequently, this article helps provide insight into how the history of emotions and slavery can be communicated creatively to general audiences in museum settings.

Whose Emotions?

ABSTRACT This article is intended both as a methodological intervention and as a provocation. It calls on us to think very carefully about how, why and (ultimately) if we should do this work of combining the history of slavery and the history of emotions. There is a danger that, without thinking through the ethics of researching and writing about the intimate, inner lives of the enslaved, the field will replicate the extractive nature of transatlantic slavery and contribute to the perpetuation of the very same emotional standards that Black people were subjected to under slavery. Thinking alongside Black Studies scholars and Black feminist theory, this article explores the following questions: whose emotions are we talking about and given the extractive nature of transatlantic slavery, how can we avoid this field perpetuating the emotional standards the regime created? It argues that considering the emotions of researchers and descendants of the enslaved is vital, as is careful consideration of the ethics and limits of the historian’s work.

‘We are not the Last of Yesterday but the First of Tomorrow’: Futural Nostalgia and the Emotionology of Postwar British Fascists

Drawing on both the history of emotions and study of radicalised temporalities in fascist cultures, this article defines and explores variants of ‘futural nostalgia’ in British fascist discourses from the 1940s to the present day. It defines ‘futural nostalgia’ as a specific type of nostalgia that is both backward looking and forward focused: it looks to the past to evoke a sense of rooted identity, community and ontological security that underpins myriad critiques of the present day as in crisis; it looks forwards in time to provide a vision of an alternate future based on its idealizations of the past. After conceptualizing this term, it explores forms of postwar British fascism that evoke this trope. Starting with Oswald Mosley and the Union Movement, the article examines variants of futural nostalgia in the emotionology of postwar British fascism, including in the National Front, Blood & Honour, the British Movement, the British National Party and National Action. It concludes by suggesting futural nostalgia is an extreme variant of far-right nostalgia, and further exploration of the phenomenon could help establish family relationships between the fascist and populist far right.

Trials of Enslavers in Former French Colonies in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Testimonies of the Enslaved between Gratitude and Fear

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on a rarely considered aspect of colonial reality: trials of enslavers. The focus lies on lawsuits against members of the slaveholding elite in which enslaved people appeared as witnesses. These sources represent a moment of confrontation within colonial society which allows for an exploration of power relations through the eyes of the enslaved rarely discovered so far. This article discusses some methodological issues of working with this type of source as well as considering how the testimonies can be used and analysed through the lens of the History of Emotions. Reading the testimonies, we encounter a wide range of emotions, from anger, jealousy, and fear up to relief and gratitude. Some of the enslaved defended the accused enslaver by expressing gratitude for food and medicine. Others denounced their enslaver using their testimony as a way of spelling out their grievances. Their accounts, even though highly mediated, not only show how existing legal and social structures were contested, but also how the enslaved opened up spaces of resistance to make their voices heard.

How Jean-Baptiste Charcot came to embrace fear but not anger. Emotions of polar exploration and their communication to the public in the 1900s

Abstract This article makes the case for applying recent developments in the history of emotions, and in particular the concept of “emotional arena”, to the study of past polar expeditions. It focuses on the first Antarctic expedition of Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1903–1905), showing how, despite a lack of ideal sources, attention to the role of emotions in his expedition, and in the way it was communicated to the public provides a new understanding of the culture of exploration of the time. The article pays particular attention to two groups of emotions: first, those related to fear, an emotion that Charcot initially was reluctant to say that he had experienced (his position changed under the influence of journalists who saw the emotion as an interesting selling point); and second, anger and hate, emotions that were deemed inappropriate and were omitted from hidden in published accounts of the expedition, even though they appear in other sources.

The Anxieties of Devised theatre - An instrument of connection

People often struggle to openly express their emotions. When asked, “How are you doing?” the typical response is a simple “Fine!” even when things may not be going well. How can we teach teenagers to articulate their feelings and navigate through new concepts such as FOMO, JOMO, cyberbullying, and the Gyges Effect, especially during the ample space and time “between school and home”? Microsoft has introduced a Chinese chatbot with the voice of a seventeen-year-old girl, serving as a confidant for millions of Chinese individuals daily. This program records users’ emotional histories and is set to be launched in Europe. The question arises: Why do young people prefer to communicate in this manner? Generația Zet. Story al unui Suferman cu Glugă a performance rooted in devised theatre principles, represents the culmination of a research process focused on depression among Generation Z pre-teens in the municipality of Iasi. Its objective is to employ theatre as an intervention in the community, fostering connections among people. This article details the construction of the mentioned performance, using practice-as-research and devised theatre methodology.

Slavery and the History of Emotions: The Greek Epigraphic Evidence

Abstract: Based on a presentation at the American Philosophical Society's Member Meeting in April 2013, this essay uses epigraphs inscribed onto grave monuments, tablets, and other forms of stonework to explore the emotions of those legally designated as slaves in ancient Greece. Noting the difficulties in recovering the feelings of the enslaved in extant literary sources, the author suggests that these inscriptions can offer a truer lens into the feelings of slavesas well as into the feelings of others toward enslaved individuals. Understanding these emotional landscapes, he argues, can help us better understand ancient Greek society as a whole.

Feeling(s) Caught Between the Austrian First Republic and Fascism

Abstract: What if fascism were a feeling first and only later a category of political history? The history of emotions offers scholars of Austria a unique lens with which to assess and explore the Ständestaat period (1933/34–1938) in a way that decenters terminology and instead questions affective economies. This article argues that Austrian para-fascism might better be understood through the emotional regimes, communities, and frontiers created in the 1930s.

Body and Mind: Feminist Reading of The Pull of the Stars

Diseases are fundamentally a human trait. Pandemics, on the other hand, create more intense experiences than world wars. They then become part of the emotional history. Most of the plagues that have ravaged the world have given rise to a variety of expressions and plagues have also found a special place in novel literature. The novel The Pull of the Stars by renowned Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue stands out among recently released pandemic literature. The novel takes place in a 1918 maternity unit in Dublin, a city devastated by the Great Famine, World War I, and the 1916 Irish Rebellion. This paper is a feminist reading of the novel The Pull of the Stars and further it explores the impact of pandemic on the marginalized body.

Feeling Happiness, Feeling Science: Diffractive Readings of Émilie Du Châtelet’s and Sophie Germain’s Philosophical Writings

Abstract In this paper I read diffractively the philosophical writings of Émilie Du Châtelet and Sophie Germain, particularly focusing on their engagement with happiness, both as a theoretical notion and as a lived experience. What I argue is that their take on happiness has nothing to do with the gendered norms and discourses of happiness that they were seen and judged by, in the longue durée of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their happiness was more in line with the joys and pleasures of knowledge, understanding, living, and creating. While feelings are central in both women’s theorization of happiness, they are deployed along different strands in the philosophical history of emotions and affects, and despite their original and unique contribution, they are still absent from it.

Katie Barclay, The History of Emotions: A Student Guide to Methods and Sources, Red Globe Press, 2020

Katie Barclay, The History of Emotions: A Student Guide to Methods and Sources, Red Globe Press, 2020

Feelings matter! Emotions in Medieval Arabic

Abstract The history of emotions is an established field in European studies. It covers all periods and many disciplines. Its premise is that emotions are shaped by culture, and that their expression and effects should be contextualised in time and place. More than this, the history of emotions asserts that emotion and intellect are interconnected, and that understanding emotion is central to understanding historical motivations and actions. This talk argues that we need an Arabic history of emotions, for which the written materials are both abundant and challenging. Identifying and interpreting emotions in medieval Arabic writing — those that it depicts, and those that it arouses in the reader — makes us ask where the task leads us. I have used an example that throws light on how adab functions as an overarching mode of thinking, and in reading it have tried to address the fundamental problem in text-based emotions history, which is distinguishing between literary (imagined) and lived emotions.

Identity and Emotions in the Long Eighteenth Century: Representing Oneself and Others in the Diary of the Marchioness of Fronteira

This paper analyses the recently published diary of the Marchioness of Fronteira, written between 1826 and 1842, from the point of view of the history of emotions. There are few diaries written by women in Portugal, especially in the troubled period of political instability, resulting from the Portuguese liberal revolution of 1820 and the consequent civil war, which led to the emigration of a significant number of the constitutional regime’s supporters. As it is primarily a travel diary, detailing encounters with other cultures and social realities, this provides a privileged source for understanding the emotions of its author, from her sociable interactions with people of both genders, and different social and geographic backgrounds. Analysis of these emotions and the author’s reactions enables study of her identity and self-perception, her emotional performativity, gender relations and her ties with an interconnected Europe.

Basic Emotions or Constructed Emotions: Insights From Taking an Evolutionary Perspective.

The ongoing debate between basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) hampers progress in the field of emotion research. Providing a new perspective, here we aim to bring the theories closer together by dissecting them according to Tinbergen's four questions to clarify a focus on their evolutionary basis. On the basis of our review of the literature, we conclude that whereas BETs focus on the evolution question of Tinbergen, the TCE is more concerned with the causation of emotion. On the survival value of emotions both theories largely agree: to provide the best reaction in specific situations. Evidence is converging on the evolutionary history of emotions but is still limited for both theories-research within both frameworks focuses heavily on the causation. We conclude that BETs and the TCE explain two different phenomena: emotion and feeling. Therefore, they seem irreconcilable but possibly supplementary for explaining and investigating the evolution of emotion-especially considering their similar answer to the question of survival value. Last, this article further highlights the importance of carefully describing what aspect of emotion is being discussed or studied. Only then can evidence be interpreted to converge toward explaining emotion.

The Emotional Work of a Would-Be Polar Explorer: Gustave Lambert’s Lecture Tour in the 1860s

Abstract This essay draws both on the history of emotions and on celebrity studies to analyse the more than two hundred lectures given by Gustave Lambert, a would-be polar explorer, between 1866 and 1870. These lectures are examined through the press coverage they provoked in various French periodicals and, secondarily, through correspondence. The article argues that Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotional work is relevant to the analysis of Lambert’s lecturing and its effects both on his audiences and on himself.