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William M. Reddy

Recent publications (1997-2007)

Forthcoming ...

Complete list of publications ...

RECENT BOOKS:

To hear an interview about this book, go to:

Psychjourney Podcasts

(also available on iTunes--search on "psychjourney")

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. William M. Reddy, author of The Navigation of Feelings: A Framework For The History Of Emotions published by Cambridge University Press.

author portrait


William M. Reddy, Ph.D., is a cultural historian who teaches at Duke University. He has been studying the history of emotional experience since 1995, and is currently writing a history of romantic love. Dr. Reddy has held fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Fullbright program, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and visiting fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for History, and the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris. His current research is supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.

 

The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions -- Cambridge University Press, 2001.

An "ambitious, brave, and important book" that "should suggest new issues and conceptual tools to historians of every sort" and will be "of signal value to the historical profession." -- Barbara Rosenwein, American Historical Review

"The result is the promise of a much-enriched historical practice ... For that we are all much in his debt." --James Smith Allen, History and Theory

"Reddy opens up a new phase in the interdisciplinary field of emotion studies ... This is a challenging book for scholars in a range of fields from social psychology to comparative historical studies and for those doing work on emotions and social movements." --E. Doyle McCarthy, American Journal of Sociology

"Simply in its nuanced statement of the nineteenth-century system ... this book is immensely valuable." --Peter Stearns, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"The great merit of The Navigation of Feeling is to have brought together insights from so many different disciplines to demonstrate what is at stake in taking emotions seriously, from both a political and a historical point of view. Reddy comunicates his deeply felt concern for individual emotional freedom ... [and] has posed many important new questions ..." --Jeremy Popkin for H-France

"Brilliant and wonderful: this is a book of profound scholarship that will become central to the fast growing interdisciplinary interest in emotions. Reddy bridges psychology, anthropology and history to explore the fascinating idea that emotion is the process that manages the concerns that are most intimate to humankind." Keith Oatley, Psychology, University of Toronto

"This is an unusual work, stimulating and productive....Reddy's intuition that emotions should not be simply differentiated in kind from 'thought' is brilliantly developed....[T]his book deserves a serious reading, and I believe it will become a must-read book in any anthropology of the self and emotion." Fred R. Myers, Anthropology, New York University

"The Navigation of Feeling is a highly original, boldly-argued book....Reddy's lucid theoretical interventions force us to reconsider our understanding of the self and human nature, as well as language and its relation to culture. The Navigation of Feeling represents a daring, new direction in humanistic scholarship that should be of interest to scholars across many fields." Mary Louise Roberts, History, University of Wisconsin

"...a delight to read..." Philosophy in Review

"...a valuable contribution to emotion literature." Canadian Social Studies

"Emotion must become the object of historical analysis in its own right. So William M. Reddy persuades us with this ambitious book ..." Paula Cossart, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine.

See this title at Cambridge University Press.

 

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The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1815-1848. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997.

Now available from netLibrary.

Duke users can consult the netLibrary version for free. Go to http://www.library.duke.edu

Many other libraries can also provide free access; and the title is available for sale in electronic form. See www.netlibrary.com .

RECENT ARTICLES:

"Anthropology and the History of Culture," in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, edited by Sarah C. Maza and Lloyd Kramer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 277-296,

"The Logic of Action: Indeterminacy, Emotion, and Historical Narrative," History and Theory, 40, No.4 (December, 2001):10-33. Click here for Abstract.

"Sentimentalism and Its Erasure: The Role of Emotions in the Era of the French Revolution," Journal of Modern History 72(2000):109-152.

"Emotional Liberty: Politics and History in the Anthropology of Emotions," Cultural Anthropology  14(1999):256-288.

"Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions," Current Anthropology, 38 (1997):327-351.