The workshop titled “Emotions, Climate, and the Environment: Historical Perspectives (18th-21st centuries)” taking place in Paris on May 23 might interest the readers of Hmadness.

Below, you will find all the information provided by the organizer of this event, Anatole Le Bras.

The illustration for this post is the painting “Melancholy” by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, painted in 1894.

“Workshop / Journée d’étude : Emotions, Climate, and the Environment. Historical Perspectives (18th-21st centuries)

24 May 2024 – Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po, Paris

‘Solastalgia’, ‘eco-anxiety’, ‘eco-grief’: in the past two decades, neologisms have flourished to describe how climate change and human-induced environmental damages are giving birth to new emotional states. But the idea that climate can drive us mad or sad is not entirely new. By bringing together environmental history, medical history and the history of emotions, this workshop seeks to historicise our emotional relation to climate and the natural environment.

Bringing together scholars from Australia, France, Switzerland, the UK and the US, the workshop will try to map how our emotional perceptions of climate(s), weather and the environment evolved from the 18th to the 21st century, and how climatic and natural elements were related to emotions such as fear, anxiety, or pleasure in specific historical, social, and political contexts. It will offer the opportunity to study how emotions are shaped by personal experiences, collective representations, medical and lay knowledges. It will also allow to identify potential sources for an emotional history of the environment, such as private diaries, weather almanacs, medical treatises, and psychiatric archives.

The talks will be given in French and in English.

Programme and registration: https://histecon.fr/emotions_climate_environment/index.html

This workshop is organised by Anatole Le Bras. It is funded by the Centre for History and Economics in Paris and hosted by the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po.”