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 reader is divided into two parts: Part I contains key essays from the fields of cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and history. These essays provide insights into how emotions are sociocultural phenomena, how they are culturally and historically specific, how they change over time, across cultures, and within societies, and how they participate in the production of power relations. Part II contains essays which illustrate core aspects of a cultural emotion studies. They adopt diverse perspectives, topics, and methodologies on emotions, offering new understandings of key themes taken up by cultural studies such as nation, the public sphere, popular culture, subjectivity, social identity, discourse, and power relations. Together, they demonstrate what emotions 'do' and how they contribute to knowledge production. "Emotions: A Cultural Studies Reader" 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.