Course Catalogue

View Specification Document | Reading List

How has anger motivated social and political change? What definitions of joy have emerged in modern history? Where can we locate expressions of love in historical music, literature, and media? What do we fear, and why? And why does nostalgia play such a central role in how we remember the past?

 The history of emotions has developed into a dynamic and increasingly influential field of historical inquiry. Historians have questioned how emotions can be identified, interpreted, and measured within their historical contexts, and examines how emotional experiences are universal or shaped by specific social, cultural, political, and economic environments. This course will explore how historians are interpreting emotions from the past, and how emotional expressions have motivated and impacted historical events and actors. It will introduce theoretical concepts used to analyse emotions and considers how these approaches could further enrich our understanding of modern history.

Two contact hours per week for 10 weeks.

 Lecture: one hour a week

 Seminar: one hour a week

Enrolment in an MA (SocSci) or MA (Arts) Honours Programme

None

None

Written Assessment, Source-Based Assessment (Primary sources)- 1,500 words (40% weighting)

Written Assignment, A Proposal for a Research Project- 3,000 words (60% weighting)

As an evolving field of study, this course aims to offer students new opportunities to develop their theoretical skills within history and enhance their critical thinking skills, as they explore new concepts and challenge disciplinary assumptions surrounding the study of emotions. This course aims to complement the existing honours modules in Economic and Social History by offering a course based on theoretical approaches to historical studies which can be implemented across a broad range of existing historical modules available at the University of Glasgow (UofG ESH catalogue). This course potentially appeals to a diverse range of students including those within ESH and History, whilst also providing interdisciplinary approaches to research which can be applied to other social science subjects such as Politics, Sociology, and Psychology.

This course aims to introduce students to the major theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches within the history of emotions. Through a combination of lectures and seminars, with weekly case studies, students will examine a range of emotions-such as love, anger, fear, and grief-and consider how these emotional experiences have been represented, constructed, and understood across different historical periods in modern history (1750-present day). By engaging critically with primary sources and scholarly debates, students will assess how emotions function both as personal experiences and as historical processes. This will support their graduate attribute skills as subject specialists, imploring methods and new theoretical approaches within the history discipline. This course offers students the opportunity to design an original project that applies the analytical tools of emotional history to a topic of their choice. This component fosters creativity, independent thinking, and methodological awareness, positioning the history of emotions as an important framework for historical analysis.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1.Explain how emotions are socially and culturally (re)constructed over time.

2.Evaluate historical debates and methodologies within the history of emotions.

3.Assess the main theoretical approaches to the study of emotions within history.

4.Apply critical analysis skills to the discussion and interpretation of primary sources utilising a history of emotions approach.

5.Design a research proposal that engages with the history of emotions to address a historical inquiry.