This guest post is by Dr Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild, a recent Visiting Fellow to the Centre for the History of the Emotions, and co-organiser of our workshop on Music, Medicine and Emotions. Dr. Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild studied musicology, philosophy and … Continue reading
This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Comyn and the first in this week’s ‘Romantic Voices’ series. Sarah is Literature Lecturer at Trinity College, University of Melbourne in Australia. Her research focuses on the transhistorical relationship between political economy … Continue reading
On the 27th of May (ie this Friday), the Centre has a one-day conference on music, medicine and emotions. Details here.) What’s the point of music? Evolutionary psychologists have come up with various answers – Steven Pinker famously declared music … Continue reading
Dr Sally Holloway and Jane Mackelworth report on the third meeting of their community book group, exploring love and its history through literature… The third meeting of our book group focused on one of the lesser-known Gothic writers of the early nineteenth century, Charlotte … Continue reading
Is weeping more Christ-like than laughing? Dr Lucy Allen is a medievalist working on the literature and culture of late-medieval England, and as a teaching associate of the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge. In this post, re-published with kind permission from … Continue reading
I’m interested in the idea of religion and the arts as forms of collective improvisation – play-areas where people can let go of their normal ego-construction and social situation, and play at other selves and other worlds. This is, in … Continue reading
On Monday, a new free online course is starting, exploring the mental health benefits of literature (you can sign up here). It’s made by the author Paula Byrne and her husband, literary academic Jonathan Bate, and features interviews with Ian … Continue reading
This is a guest-post by Dr Julie Walsh, global research fellow in sociology at the University of Warwick. Forgetting a word, a dream … I look for it, I don’t find it, it will come back to me. We have … Continue reading
The documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and … Continue reading
I’m researching the history of ecstasy and ecstatic experiences in modern western culture, how spiritual ecstasy got pathologised from the Enlightenment to the present day, and how people found new ways to get out of their heads. An important part … Continue reading