Modernity and the Emotions

Paper Title:  “Modernity and the Emotions”

Presenter:  Barbara H. Rosenwein

Abstract:  In this paper I will take up two contrasting views, both dominant at the moment, albeit (to be sure) within certain groups: 1) that the history of emotions changed with modernity; 2) that the history of emotions was determined during the Stone Age.  Challenging both of these, I will discuss how the idea of “emotional communities” can provide the scaffolding for a history of the emotions that gives weight to changes after the Pleistocene but nevertheless does not rely on the idea of modernity for its periodization.