This cluster explores the relationship between the family, broadly defined, and emotion.
Image: The Satyr and the Peasant Family by Jan Steen, c.1660. Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Families have long been viewed as the seat of emotion ‒ an institution that provides most people with their first emotional relationships, that educates children in proper emotional performances, and which provides the site of many of our strongest emotional investments. The aim of this cluster is to bring together researchers working on the history of the family to discuss ideas, network, share working papers, and to allow formal and informal collaborations.
In 2016‒2017, the cluster has been particularly interested in the relationship between memory, family and emotion. How are families remembered; what role does lineage play in our identity; how does the family shape the self; and what role does emotion play in such processes? We have a particular interest in how different objects, material cultures and spaces shape these relationships. How do family photographs conserve and reproduce emotion? What role does emotion play in processes of inheritance? How does this change over time and across space?
More broadly, we continue our long-running interest in emotion in family relationships and dynamics, with work on maternity and paternity, parenting practices, love and marriage, and childhood continuing to be strong areas for collaboration.
Collaborating Members
Joanne Begatio, Oxford Brookes University
Loretta Baldassar, The University of Western Australia
Ashley Barnwell, The University of Melbourne
Leanne Calvert, University of Ulster
Angela Davis, The University of Warwick
Rosemary Elliot, The University of Glasgow
Tanya Evans, Macquarie University
Martin Forsey, The University of Western Australia
Eleanor Gordon, The University of Glasgow
Sally Holloway, Richmond, The American International University in London
Laura King, The University of Leeds
Rachel E. Moss, The University of Oxford
Ben Parsons, The University of Leicester
Simon Sleight, King’s College London
Raelene Wilding, Latrobe University
Cluster activities
‘Romantic Rituals: Making Love in Europe, c.1100 to the present’ Workshop, The University of Adelaide, 4 July 2016
‘The Heart’ Study Day, The University of Melbourne, 11 March 2016
‘From Institution to Intimacy: Courtship, Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in Historical Perspective, c.1650 to 2000’, International Symposium, The University of Glasgow, 11‒12 September 2015
Main Outcomes
Barclay, K., C. Rawnsley and K. Reynolds, eds. Death, Emotion and Childhood in Premodern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Work in progress
17th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities, Hofstra University, NY. Cluster panel on: ‘Gender, Emotion and Engaging with the Past: A Difficult Conversation’, 1‒4 June 2017
1st International Conference on Contemporary and Historical Approaches to Emotions, The University of Wollongong. Cluster panel: ‘Emotions and Early Modern Parenting’, 5‒7 December 2016
Contact
Katie Barclay (katie.barclay@adelaide.edu.au)
Further information on related Research Projects