On The Aura: Medicine meets Spiritualism in the Nineteenth Century

Olivia Krauze is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores the concept of ‘violent emotion’ in nineteenth-century medicine and fiction. Her interests more broadly include affect theory, the medical humanities, sexuality and queer studies, … Continue reading

Fear, Time, and Agency

Suzy Lawrence is a PhD candidate at King’s College London. Her research explores moments of individual emotional agency in early modern drama In this post, she looks at how connections between fear and time are used to control people’s behaviour … Continue reading

Understanding Anger within a Historical Framework

Will Watson is a PhD candidate at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London. In this post for the History of Emotions Blog, he reflects on the place of anger in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland … Continue reading

Reading Darwin’s Expression

Psychology texts all name Darwin as a founder, yet hail only one concept: natural selection. None seems to know that his books represent a distinctive approach to understanding all forms of agency. This post examines how Darwin’s psychology shaped his … Continue reading

Newborn Imitation: The Stakes of a Controversy. Ruth Leys and Jan Plamper in conversation.

Ruth Leys is Henry Wiesenfeld Professor Emerita of the Humanities (Johns Hopkins University). Her pathbreaking research has critically interrogated the history of the modern concept of psychic trauma (Trauma: A Genealogy, 2000); examined the post-World War II vicissitudes of the … Continue reading

The Emotional Contagion: Feelings, Emotions, and the Pandemic. An interview with Tiffany Watt Smith

On 15th May 2020, Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Queen Mary Paolo Gervasi interviewed Tiffany Watt Smith about the emotions surrounding the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Italian journal Che Fare. It can be read here in Italian,https://www.che-fare.com/gervasi-contagio-tiffany-watt-smith/, and the original English version is … Continue reading

Dr Thomas Brown (1778-1820)

In this post for the History of Emotions Blog, Professor Thomas Dixon looks back at the life and influence of the man he has suggested was the ‘inventor of the emotions’. Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of … Continue reading

To Lose the Physician

Biography Stephen Pender is Professor of English at the University of Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. He is a specialist in early modern literature and intellectual history. This post is derived from an October 2019 lunchtime seminar at the QMUL Centre … Continue reading