Mood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical exploration of the phenomenon of mood from an interdisciplinary angle. Building on cutting-edge research in this emerging field and bringing together established and new voices, it bridges the existing disciplinary gap in the study of mood and further consolidates this phenomenon as a crucial concept in disciplinary and interdisciplinary study. By combining perspectives and concepts from the literary studies, philosophy, musicology, the social sciences, artistic practice and psychology, the volume does the complexity and richness of mood-related phenomena justice and benefits from the latent connections and synergies in different disciplinary approaches to the study of mood.

About the Author

Birgit Breidenbach is a Lecturer in Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. After earning a B.A. at the University of Giessen and an M.A. at the University of Warwick, she completed a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick in 2017 with a thesis on the role of mood in the literature of European modernity. Her published and presented work focuses on literary and aesthetic theory, affect and the interplay between philosophy and literature.

Thomas Docherty is Professor of English and of Comparative Literature in the University of Warwick. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Literature and Capital (Bloomsbury, 2018); The New Treason of the Intellectuals (Manchester University Press, 2018); Complicity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); Universities at War (Sage, 2015); Confessions (Bloomsbury, 2012). Political English will appear from Bloomsbury in 2019. He is currently completing a study of Censorship , and a novel, provisionally titled Of Silence and Slow Time . In 2016, he was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Letters, from the University of Kent.