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

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

On Positive Psychology and the Positive University

Earlier this year, Anthony Seldon, the new vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, announced he was making Buckingham into the UK’s first ‘positive university’. All students will take a course in Positive Psychology. All tutors will be trained in Positive … Continue reading

The rational value of political anger

In this, the third in our series on #BadFeelings, exploring negative emotions, the philosopher Mary Carman looks at the meaning and value of anger. Mary is a member of Thumos, the Genevan Research Group on Emotions, Norms and Values at the Swiss … Continue reading

“Ava’s Sigh” Prelude to Mood Shifts: A Sonic Repertoire, Tuesday, June 6th

Mary Cappello’s five books of literary nonfiction include Awkward: A Detour (a Los Angeles Times bestseller); Swallow, based on the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection in Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum; and, most recently, Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack (University of … Continue reading