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Article: Fear and contemporary history: a review essay.(SECTION III REGIONAL ISSUES)
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- December 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A number of books in recent years, including an important new entry by Joanna Bourke, have pointed to significant changes in American and/or modern fears, in ways that cry out for historical assessment. The very bulk of the work, most of it launched before 9/11 though sometimes finetuned in the aftermath of this massive emotional spur, suggests that something new is going on--that is, that there is a significant shift underway in contemporary emotional history. A number of studies explicitly claim that fear has become the predominant emotion in contemporary life--and that this is a significant change. Yet relatively little of the recent scholarship is explicitly ...