Course overview
How we feel and what counts as an emotion changes across time and geographical space. This course introduces students to the history of emotions, highlighting how our emotional worlds, how we feel and show our feelings, what language we use to express emotion, and the social acceptability of particular emotional expressions, have changed over time. Students will encounter some of the key concepts or approaches used by historians to understand how emotions worked in the past, and a range of examples from the medieval to the modern and across the world that highlight the diversity of emotional experience. Key issues that can be explored by students include how emotions are involved in national identity and the making of communities; how emotions are shaped by gender or within families; how the media uses emotion to shape public opinion; and the role of emotion in legal practices and the creation of justice. More generally, we will consider how emotions make history. Through lectures, workshops and structured learning activities, students will have the opportunity to try out some of key history of emotion concepts by applying them to original historical sources. In learning about the past, students might also come to better understand the operation of emotion in the present. This is an interdisciplinary course and may appeal to students interested in emotion in psychology, biology, anthropology, literature and philosophy, as well as history.
Course learning outcomes
- Have a focused understanding of the historiography of the history of emotions
- Be aware of how different methodologies and concepts shape debates in the history of emotions
- Be able to locate, contextualise and analyse primary and secondary sources relevant to the history of emotions as part of independent or collaborative research
- Be able to apply appropriate history of emotions methodologies or concepts to primary and secondary sources to engage with historical problems
- Be able to effectively use appropriate spoken and written formats to portray their understanding of the history of emotions
- Be able to work independently of staff to achieve research goals in the history of emotion and contribute findings to group learning activities
- Be able to proficiently use contemporary technologies to communicate learning and research findings
- Be able to participate in professional practice and ethical issues in researching the history of emotions
- Have an understanding of the diversity of emotions across historical time and the ways they shape and are shaped by temporal and geographical context
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The Student Contribution amount displayed below is for students commencing a new program from 2021 onwards. If you are continuing in a program you commenced prior to 1 January 2021, or are commencing an Honours degree relating to an undergraduate degree you commenced prior to 1 January 2021, you may be charged a different Student Contribution amount from the amount displayed below. Please check the Student Contribution bands for continuing students here. If you are an international student, or a domestic student studying in a full fee paying place, and are continuing study that you commenced in 2025 or earlier, your fees will be available here before enrolments open for 2026.