Elizabeth Stephens, 'Queer Sensations: Towards an Affective Genealogy of the Modern Body' - a podcast by The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800)

Elizabeth Stephens is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Southern Cross University and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her new book, A Critical Genealogy of Normality, which she co-authored with Peter Cryle, is forthcoming with Chicago University Press in 2017. This paper, ‘Queer Sensations: Towards an Affective Genealogy of the Modern Body’, was delivered as a keynote address at the ‘First International Conference on Contemporary and Historical Approaches to Emotions’ at the University of Wollongong on 6 December 2016. It draws on recent work in feminist affect studies and cultural histories of emotion to develop the idea of an ‘affective genealogy’. The case of James Tilly Matthews, a man committed to the Bedlam Lunatic Asylum in 1797 for claiming that his body and brain were being controlled by a secret machine, Stephens suggests, is representative of a transformation of the human sensorium by the start of the Industrial Age.

Further episodes of Emotions Make History

Further podcasts by The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800)

Website of The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800)