What is the History of Emotions?

What is the History of Emotions? A Primer offers an accessible path through the thicket of approaches, debates, and past and current trends in the history of emotions. Although historians have always talked about how people felt in the past, it is only in the last few decades that they have found systematic and well-grounded ways to treat the topic.

In this updated edition of their acclaimed introduction to this field, Rosenwein and Cristiani begin with the science of emotion, where most of today’s working definitions originate, and explain what contemporary psychologists and neuropsychologists think emotions are. They continue with the foundational approaches to the history of emotions and then treat in depth new work that builds on and develops this scholarship, pushing into some of the field's liveliest debates, including the emotions of animals and plants.

In an entirely new and hands-on section, they offer practical exercises at a variety of levels to help readers engage in and do the history of emotions themselves. Drawing upon a wide range of sources from across time and space, they offer guided analyses of extant historical material. Students, teachers, and anyone else interested in emotions and how to think about them historically will find this primer to be an indispensable and fascinating escort into a new and exciting field.