The History of Emotions: Second Edition - Paperback

by Rob Boddice (Author)

This book introduces students and professional historians to the main areas of concern in the history of emotions and its intersection with emotion research in other disciplines. It discusses how the emotions intersect with other lines of historical research relating to power, practice, society and morality. The revised and fully updated second edition of the book demonstrates the field's centrality to historiographical practice, as well as the importance of this kind of historical work for general interdisciplinary understandings of the value and the meaning of human experience.

Back Jacket

Fully revised and updated, The history of emotions is the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to the theories, methods, achievements and problems in this field of historical inquiry and its intersections with other disciplines.

Historians of emotion borrow heavily from the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, and stake out a claim that emotions have a past and change over time. This book introduces students and professional historians to the main areas of concern in the history of emotions, discussing how the emotions intersect with other lines of historical research relating to power, practice, society and morality. Providing a narrative of historical emotions concepts, this is the go-to handbook for understanding the problems of interpreting historical experience, collating and evaluating all the principal methodological tools generated and used by historians of emotion. It lays out an historiographical map of emotions history research in the past and present, and sets the agenda for the future of the history of emotions. Chiefly centring on the rapprochement of the humanities and the neurosciences, the book proposes a way forward in which disciplinary lines become blurred.

Addressing criticism from both within and without the discipline of history, The history of emotions demonstrates the field's centrality to historiographical practice, as well as the importance of this kind of historical work for general interdisciplinary understandings of the value and meaning of human experience.

Author Biography

Rob Boddice is a Senior Researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, Tampere University