Feelings Matter: Historians Emotions

• Authors: Leena Rossi , Tuija Aarnio

Abstracts

EN

This paper aims to open the discussion about historian's emotions during the research process that has mostly been covered up. It does not pretend to be a thorough account of the topic but a modest essay that might encourage other researcher to reflect on their experiences. Firstly, we briefly describe the current situation in a few neighboring disciplines. Secondly, we explain how we understand emotions and use the terms emotion, feeling and sentiment. Thirdly, we discuss the reasons why most historians keep silent about their feelings. Fourthly, with two examples, we illustrate how historians have written about their emotions. Fifthly, we present a model of emotional phases of research by the Danish social psychologist Steinar Kvale and evaluate its relevance to historical research. Then we look at the causes and/or objects offeelings of students or beginning scholars incultural history. Finally, we suggest some ways we historians could make our scholarly community emotionally a more supportive one. - It might be good to remember that our discussion concerns primarily the Finnish academic world, and the situation in other countries might be slightly different.

Keywords

EN

history; academic world; emotion; feeling; research in history

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Historyka Studia Metodologiczne
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 37-38
• Pages: 3-18

Dates

published

2008

Contributors

author

Leena Rossi

author

Tuija Aarnio

Identifiers

Biblioteka Nauki

56473125