What do emotions actually do? Recent work in the history of emotions and
its intersections with cultural studies and new materialism has produced
groundbreaking revelations around this fundamental question. In
Emotional Bodies, contributors pick up these threads of inquiry to
propose a much-needed theoretical framework for further study of
materiality of emotions, with an emphasis on emotions' performative
nature. Drawing on diverse sources and wide-ranging theoretical
approaches, they illuminate how various persons and groups--patients,
criminals, medieval religious communities, revolutionary crowds, and
humanitarian agencies--perform emotional practices. A section devoted to
medical history examines individual bodies while a section on social and
political histories studies the emergence of collective bodies.
Contributors: Jon Arrizabalaga, Rob Boddice, Leticia Fernández-Fontecha,
Emma Hutchison, Dolores Martín-Moruno, Piroska Nagy, Beatriz Pichel,
María Rosón, Pilar León-Sanz, Bertrand Taithe, and Gian Marco Vidor.