This is a guest post by Dr Åsa Jansson, an associate member of the Centre for the History of the Emotions. Her research explores the history of “disordered” or “pathological” emotions since the 1800s, and the different ways in which … Continue reading
Dr Åsa Jansson completed her PhD at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London in 2014. Her thesis mapped the re-conceptualisation of melancholia as a modern biomedical mental disease in Victorian medicine. In this blog … Continue reading
Dr Åsa Jansson recently completed her PhD at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. Her thesis mapped the re-conceptualisation of melancholia as a modern biomedical mental disease in Victorian medicine. In this blog … Continue reading
Pain is a sensation – and a topic – that has recently attracted much attention among historians, particularly those working in the field of the history of emotions. This post interrogates perceptions of mental pain that link this feeling to … Continue reading
I’ve had quite a few conversations with colleagues about the challenges and rewards of archival research. We’ve talked about the joy of discovering a letter or memo or perhaps a collection of photographs barely touched for decades, as well as … Continue reading
What is melancholia? In Danish writer and director Lars von Trier’s latest film Melancholia, it is a planet. The planet is, perhaps, in turn a metaphor for melancholia. Which brings us no closer to an answer. The film has been … Continue reading
After months of planning, last week it was finally time for the Centre’s one-and-a-half day conference on the theme ‘Mastering the Emotions: Control, Contagion and Chaos, 1800 to the Present Day’. This international and interdisciplinary gathering of scholars with a … Continue reading