Understanding our emotional heritage

When the Australian Research Council (ARC) gave the go-ahead for 13 centres of excellence in the 2011 funding round announced at the end of July, one project stood out from the rest.

Under the directorship of historian Professor Philippa Maddern, the Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions (CHE) will receive $24.25 million over seven years (from 2011–2017) to investigate long-term changes and continuities in emotional regimes in Europe from 1100–1800. The other 12 centres funded under this year’s funding round all sit within the natural, technological, and health sciences. As such, ARC funding for the Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions represents a major breakthrough for scholars in the humanities.

Further, while it is rare for centre of excellence funding to flow to the humanities, it is even less common in disciplines such as history. In fact, never before has an ARC-funded centre of excellence been framed by historical inquiry.

This was certainly not lost on the academic team representing the History of Emotions bid. In fact it could be said to have been top of mind when presenting to the selection panel in Canberra. “Mostly these centres go to the sciences which have a stronger record in managing large-scale projects,” says Stephanie Trigg, Professor of English in the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne. “I don’t think the panel was expecting our team to be so well prepared on all the managerial-style questions.”

The History of Emotions research team planned and executed a new approach, one which it believes will revolutionise research in the humanities and creative arts by initiating innovative research collaborations across many disciplines.

“For the first time we will fully analyse the social, cultural and political effects of mass emotional events (over time,” says Professor Maddern “and invigorate Australian culture through reflective performances in drama, opera and art.

“By addressing the big question of how societies think, feel and function, (our research) will provide greatly enhanced understandings of how to improve emotional health among modern Australians.”

The CHE will establish four research programs under the themes of ‘Meanings’, ‘Change’, ‘Performance’, and ‘Shaping the Modern’.

The University of Melbourne is a major partner in the CHE which will be housed at the University of Western Australia. Melbourne will contribute approximately $1.7 million to the centre.

Professor Trigg and Professor Charles Zika from the School of Historical Studies are chief investigators, with Professor Trigg assuming leadership of the Shaping the Modern program. They join a team of world-class researchers from Australian and international universities and organisations including the Universities of Adelaide, Sydney and Queensland, Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Fribourg, Newcastle University and Queen Mary University of London in the UK, Umeå University in Sweden, the National Gallery of Victoria, Western Australia Opera, and ABC TV.

Professor Trigg will be leading two specific projects within the auspices of the Shaping the Modern program to explore how the long history of European emotions underpins modern Australian understandings of our own emotional culture and heritage.

“This exploration is framed by a series of seminal questions,” says Professor Trigg. “What happens when European emotional regimes are transported into a colonial context? What role do emotions play in the development of Australian national identity? How do we track emotional continuities and discontinuities between past and present? And what can we learn from older emotional regimes about contemporary social and cultural patterns?”

Professor Trigg’s first project will focus on historical changes in the expression of emotion on the human face. “My plan is to investigate the ways artists and writers learnt to portray individual and cultural difference in the expression of emotion.”

Her second project will track the changing emotional responses to two trans-historical elements: stone and fire. With regard to fire, a subject of intense contemporary interest and discussion, the project will chart emotional responses from the medieval period through to modernity, with a special focus on Australian responses. “For example, do people always respond to the devastation of fire in the same way?” poses Professor Trigg. “Samuel Pepys describes his tears in response to the Great Fire of London in 1666, but the more dominant model of masculinity has been to repress the public display of emotion.”

In the modern Australian context, Professor Trigg points to one man’s comments reported in The Age newspaper after the Black Saturday fires of 2009: “I still have not had a cry yet. I’m holding all that back. I have not been alone yet”. “But we know,” says Professor Trigg “that when leaders visited the scene and wept with the victims, it seemed to provide emotional comfort.”

Professor Trigg’s University of Melbourne colleague, Professor Charles Zika, a specialist in the cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, will work within the Change program. He will be using his expertise in the field of religious practice and demonological belief, such as pilgrimage and exorcism, to explain the role emotions play in the interaction between individuals or communities and the supernatural.

The CHE plans to develop and communicate its findings through three major public productions, including a television series, a Shakespearean theatre performance and a Baroque opera. Professor Zika will also work with researchers and curators involved in a major exhibition on the emotions in pre-modern Europe at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017.

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