Emotions ─ A Cultural Studies Reader

Emotions: A Cultural Studies Reader brings together the best examples of recent and cutting-edge work on emotions in cultural studies and related disciplines. The book differentiates between theoretical traditions and ways of understanding emotion in relation to culture, subjectivity and power, thus mapping a new academic territory and providing a succinct overview of cultural studies as well as studies of emotion.
The collection provides students with an essential overview of contemporary academic debate within the humanities and social sciences on the place of emotions in culture, as part of everyday individual, cultural, and political life.

Jennifer Harding is Principal Lecturer in Media and Communications at London Metropolitan University. Previous publications include Sex Acts: Practices of Femininity and Masculinity (1998) and numerous articles on the body, sexuality, gender, emotions, and life history research.

Deidre Pribram is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Communication Arts and Sciences Department at Molloy College, Long Island, New York. Previous publications include Cinema and Culture: Independent Film in the United States, 1980-2001 (2002) and numerous articles on film, television, gender, and culture.

Introduction Part One: Disciplinary Developments I. Culturalist Foundations. Raymond Williams - On Structure of Feeling. Alison M. Jaggar - Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology. Lawrence Grossberg - Postmodernity and Affect: All Dressed Up with No Place to Go II. Contributions from Cultural Anthropology. Michelle Z. Rosaldo - Towards an Anthropology of Self and Feeling. Lila Abu-Lughod and Catherine A. Lutz - Emotion, Discourse, and the Politics of Everyday Life. Jennifer Biddle - Shame III. Sociological Perspectives. Virginia Oelsen and Deborah Bone - Emotions in Rationalizing Organizations: Conceptual Notes from Professional Nursing in the USA. Simon J. Williams - Modernity and the Emotions: Corporeal Reflections on the (Ir)rational. Ian Burkitt - Powerful Emotions: Power, Government and Opposition in the War on Terror IV. Historical Approaches. Carol Z. Stearns – ‘Lord Help Me Walk Humbly’: Anger and Sadness in England and America, 1570-1750. Nancy Schnog - Changing Emotions: Moods and the 19th-Century American Woman Writer. Carolyn Kay Steedman - Stories Part Two: Considering Culture V. Confounding Nationhood. Arjun Appadurai - Fear of Small Numbers. Sara Ahmed - The Organization of Hate. Jennifer Harding - Emotional Subjects: Language and Power in Refugee Narratives VI. Transforming the Public. Lauren Berlant - The Intimate Public Sphere. Michael Eric Dyson - Does George W. Bush Care about Black People? Elspeth Probyn - Shaming Theory, Thinking Dis-Connections: Feminism and Reconciliation VII. Popular Arts. R. Darren Gobert - Dramatic Catharsis, Freudian Hysteria and the ‘Private Theatre’ of Anna O. Linda Williams - Melodrama Revised. E. Deidre Pribram - Cold Comfort: Emotion, Television Detection Dramas, and Cold Case. VIII. Affecting Subjects. Fatima Mernissi - Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems. Denise Riley - Malediction. Judith Butler - Violence, Mourning, Politics. Index