Introduction

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Katie Barclay, ‘State of the Field: History of Emotions’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association 106, no. 371 (2021): 460. See this article for an extensive discussion of the themes and geographical areas that have been the focus of discussion.

2 Peter Stearns and Carol Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985): 813.

3 William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

4 Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (And is that What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51 (2012), 193–220.

5 See, for example, Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris, ‘Researching Nineteenth-Century African American History’, Journal of the Civil War Era 12, no. 4 (Dec. 2022): 429–47; Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); ‘Venus in Two Acts’, Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–14; Stephanie Smallwood, ‘The Politics of the Archive and History’s Accountability to the Enslaved’, History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History 6, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 117–32.

6 Cusworth’s article encouraged us to reflect on our own positionality as white editors of this special edition. We recognize that the emotional labour of undertaking this research and writing these histories is felt more acutely by those who are descendants of the enslaved.

7 Berry and Harris, ‘Researching Nineteenth-Century African American History’, 429–47.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beth R. Wilson

Beth R. Wilson is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Reading, School of Humanities, Edith Morley Building, Shinfield Road, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6EL, UK. Email: [email protected].

Emily West

Emily West is Professor of History, Department of History, University of Reading, School of Humanities, Edith Morley Building, Shinfield Road, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6EL, UK. Email: [email protected].