Doing Emotions History

Afterword

aftErWorD susa n J. m at t a n D PE tEr n. stE a rns The momentum for research in the history of emotions is truly impressive, after the somewhat tentative launch of the field several decades back. Major centers in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany as well as periodic conferences in many other countries demonstrate the growing institutional interest in emotions history. Individual scholars and writers contribute additional vigor, under the emotions history label or more indirectly. A recent study of the modern history of sincerity, calling attention to the important emotional alignments involved, is an intriguing case in point.1 Emotions history is gaining recognition as an innovative way to improve understanding of how the human animal operates. As noted in the introduction, it is turning from duckling to academic swan. Thisbookhasbeenintendedtocaptureexistingstrengths,withoutpretendingtocomprehensivecoverage ,butabovealltosuggestexamplesanddirections for the future. The essays certainly address a number of crucial points, vital to the field as it moves forward. Several chapters, for example, explicitly deal with causation, highlighting the possibility of understanding why emotional change occurs rather than simply recording it. Even such simple technological innovations as the telegraph can factor into emotional change (or perceptions ofchange).Likewise,urbanizationandindustrializationhavesignificanteffects on emotional life. 206 afterword Dealingwiththeconsequencesofemotionalchangeisaclosetwintocausation . Emotional shifts, even around specific feelings such as joy, help explain important developments in politics. They’re crucial to understanding patterns of legal change. John Corrigan reminds us of the opportunity to use emotions historytohelpexplainsurgesinviolence,andsurelymoreworkonthisconnection will pay dividends in the future. The chapters on religion, politics, and the media are deliberately designed to show how emotions history interconnects with historical inquiry into other facets of society, and connections of this sort will be expanded in the future—for example, to link to analyses of economic change or innovations in health and medicine. Historical analysis thus deals both with how emotions respond to discrete developments in other domains and with how emotions help to translate change not only into personal and family life but into wider areas of social behavior. These connections provide abundant spurs to further research. The essays in the volume, particularly of course in chapters 3 and 4, show the great potential in expanding emotions history beyond Western confines. It’s obvious that a number of important regions are still largely left out of emotionshistory ,unavailableforcomment.Butglasshalffull:atleastwe’regaining important examples of how a more ambitious geography can be tackled and what the benefits are in terms of both better regional and better emotional understandings. Wecanhopeaswellthatfutureeffortswillpushmoredirectlyintocomparative work, something that emotions historians have thus far largely avoided. Additionalinnovationsarealreadyonthehorizon.Thesteadydevelopment of research in neuroscience cries out for imaginative combination with history . John Corrigan reminds us of the difficulties of using data on emotional biology to understand developments in religion, but we will surely see some further efforts in the future. Tentative conversations between neuroscientists and historians are already generating new projects—for example, around the emotionalexperiencesofwitchesseenthroughacombinationofneuroscience categories and historical materials—and we can expect more. Asmoreculturalmaterialsaredigitized,wecanalsoexpectthetechniquesof data mining to contribute directly to emotions history. By allowing historians to determine the incidence of key words and combinations, data mining can establish some analytical parameters in ways heretofore impossible, though the results still will require qualitative work. An example: the word sulky—an intriguingemotionalterm—enteredtheEnglishlanguagein1744.Datamining onpublishedmaterialsinthe nineteenth-centuryUnitedStatesshowsthatthe 207 afterword word was almost never actually used until the 1840s but then surged forward steadily in the early twentieth century, after which it declined rapidly and leveled off once more.2 Why did emotional sulkiness draw new interest? Why did concern drop? The answers depend on further work, but the questions, which can be clearly posed only through quantitative assessments, are already intriguing. Stay tuned: this aspect of emotions history is just getting going. Finally, as noted in the Introduction, the emotions historians of the future needtocontinuetopondertheirrelevantaudiences.Therearetwoangleshere. First,potentiallyatleast,emotionshistorycouldwinsignificantattentionfrom thatelusiveanimal,thewiderreadingpublic.Expansioninthisdirectioncould facilitate better understanding of history and of emotion alike. As with most research fields, emotions historians to date have been pretty busy dealing with otherproblems—likesourcesandmethods—andwritingforotherresearchers, but down the line there might be opportunities to develop a broader readership . Further expansion to student audiences is already possible and would constitute a step in the right direction. Fruitful popularization aside, emotions historians must also keep in mind their mutual connections with other fields engaged in similar research. There’s anaudiencehereforgoodemotionshistory,aslongasitisnottooboggeddown in historical minutiae. A key reason to pay renewed attention to the relationships between modernity and emotion is to...