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School for Cross-faculty Studies Liberal Arts

IP211/IP311 Emotion: Thinking with Feeling

Module Overview

People are emotional beings, but we often find it difficult to think and talk about feelings. On this module, we bring emotions into the spotlight, as we use interdisciplinary approaches to explore understandings of emotion as a cultural, social, psychological, and political experience. We consider what emotion means to individuals, communities, and societies, and examine how emotions feel, and, in turn, how we feel about emotions.

Module aims:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • understand the history of thought surrounding emotions and feelings
  • reflect critically on understandings of emotion drawn from a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives
  • analyse expressions of emotion in different media, from different times, places, and cultures
  • interpret emotions and felt experiences using a range of different disciplinary perspectives and approaches
  • mobilise critical and theoretical perspectives to support ideas and understandings of emotion
  • design, develop, and produce independent research projects
  • work collaboratively to approach and respond to intellectual problems
  • express ideas in different formats, for different audiences

Module Leader:

Dr Kim Lockwood Clough

Optional module

Term 2 | 10 weeks

15 CATS

2 hour workshop per week


Available to Year 2 and Year 3 students in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, and Year 2 and Year 3 external students.

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-Faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages

Example syllabus:

Please note that this syllabus is purely indicative, and that actual module content may differ.

  1. Introduction to Emotion
  2. Histories of Emotion
  3. We Belong Together: Connection and Community
  4. Shame: Privacy and Discipline
  5. Green Eyed Monsters: Greed and Envy
  6. What is Love? Grand Narratives, Big Feelings
  7. Rage Against the Machine: The Politics of Anger and Bile
  8. Feeling Low: The Art of Depression
  9. Feeling High: Joy and Delight
  10. Assessment Support
Assessments:

There are three assessments on this module:

Assessment Weighting Description
Express Yourself! 35% creative representation of emotion
Reflective Piece 15% 500 word commentary on creative work
Research Project 50% academic essay, video essay, visual essay, creative work

Illustrative reading list:

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Allen, Kelly-Ann. 2020. The Psychology of Belonging. New York and London: Routledge.
  • Berlant, Lauren, ed. 2004. Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Berlant, Lauren. 2012. Desire/Love. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books.
  • Chemaly, Soraya. 2018. Rage Becomes Her. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  • Cherry, Myisha. 2021. The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cvetkovich, Ann. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Daniel, Drew. 2013. The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the Renaissance. New York: Fordham University Press.
  • Deonna, Julien A., Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni. 2012. In Defense of Shame: The Faces of an Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Dixon, Thomas. 2023. The History of Emotions: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Elias, Norbert. 2000. The Civilising Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Featherstone, Mike, ed. 1998. Love and Eroticism. London and New Delhi: Sage Publications.
  • Flam, Helena, and Jochen Kleres, eds. 2015. Methods of Exploring Emotions. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Flannery, Mary C. 2021. Practising Shame: Female Honour in Later Medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Goodwin, Jeff, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds. 2001. Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Illouz, Eva. 2012. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. London: Polity.
  • Irigaray, Luce. 2002. The Way of Love. Translated by Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluhacek. London and New York: Continuum.
  • Jack, Dana C., and Alisha Ali, eds. 2010. Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • James, Robin. 2015. Resilience and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism. Winchester and Washington: Zero Books.
  • Kim, David Kyuman. 2007. Melancholy Freedom: Agency and the Spirit of Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Kleinman, Arthur, and Byron Goode. 1985. Culture and Depression: Studies in the Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affective Disorder. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  • Lorde, Audrey. 1981. The Uses of Anger. Women's Studies Quarterly 9, no. 3: 7-10.
  • Lund, Mary Ann. 2021. A User’s Guide to Melancholy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Martin, Emily. 2009. Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • May, Simon. 2011. Love: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Morgan, Michael L. 2011. On Shame. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Plamper, Jan. 2015. The History of Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Probyn, Elspeth. 2005. Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Radden, Jennifer. 2002. The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Rosenwein, Barbara H. 2020. Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Rosenwein, Barbara H., and Riccardo Cristiani. 2018. What is the History of Emotions? Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1999. A Dialogue on Love. Boston: Beacon Press.
  • Singh, Julietta. 2018. No Archive Will Restore You. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books.
  • Stearns, Peter N. 1994. American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth- Century Emotional Style. New York: New York University Press.
  • Swidler, Ann. 2001. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Wilson, Elizabeth A. 2004. Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Wilson, Elizabeth A. 2015. Gut Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press