2021-2022 Catalog

HST-484 History of the Emotions

Explores ideas about emotional life from the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, and psychology as well as the evolution of emotion rules and prescriptions, focusing on western Europe and the United States since 1700. In the eighteenth century, emotions were seen as a positive influence on politics and public life, especially during the French Revolution. After the fall of Robespierre, the emotions were banished to the private sphere - so we will read both primary sources and recent scholarship on 19th- and 20th- century ideas about masculinity and femininity, romantic love and marriage, childrearing, and about what parents and children are supposed feel toward each other, how ideas about these subjects have changed over time, and whether our feelings change with them.

Credits

4

Core Curriculum

  • Perspectives

Offered

Ocasionally