Browse Hierarchy ULC204: History of Sensibilities and Emotions

In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to historical experiences and practices of emotion. Today, the History of emotions constitutes a growing field of enquiry, particularly in anglophone universities. The field has, however, drawn considerable inspiration from French scholarship on the history of bodies and sensibilities. This module encourages students to engage with scholarship in English and in French in order to understand emotional experience, expression and practice in the modern era. Focusing on emotion in Western European societies and colonial empires, students will be invited to reflect on how modern understandings of race, gender and the body gave rise to `emotional regimes', and how communities of sentiment were imagined, maintained and contested by historical actors through diverse cultural practices which constituted different bodies in different ways. The module will provide students with the terminology and methodologies particular to the historical study of emotions, and encourage them to think about the experience and expression of emotions such as love, fear, loneliness and nostalgia in specific historical contexts.