History of Emotions

Catalog description

'What is an emotion?' That question, famously posed by William James in the late 19th century, has sparked wide-ranging debate among experimental psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, theologians, and literary scholars. This course addresses James's question by historicizing it. It begins by situating his approach within a long tradition of attempts to define the emotions or 'passions' as they were generally called until the 19th century from antiquity to the present. Then it turns to an exploration of how the changing conditions of modern life have altered both the character of emotional experience and the conventions governing its expression. Among the themes to which we'll pay particular attention are the growing demands of emotional self-control, the widening gap between children and adults, the shifting relations between private experience and public expression, and the advancing threshold of disgust. In the final section of the course, we will focus on how Americans have sought, over the last two hundred years, to control or, as it's now said, 'manage' three particularly intractable sets of emotions: homesickness and nostalgia; fear and anxiety; and anger and resentment. The course will conclude by exploring how the long-term project of emotional self-control is faring in the age of resurgent right-wing populism and social-media trolls.