Scholars@Duke
William M. Reddy

William M. Reddy

William T. Laprade Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History
History
wmr@duke.edu
Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708-0719
226 Classroom Building, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

The invisible code: Honor and sentiment in postrevolutionary France, 1814-1848

Book · April 28, 2023 This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived ... Cite

TO FLY THE PLANE: LANGUAGE GAMES, HISTORICAL NARRATIVES, AND EMOTIONS

Journal Article History and Theory · March 1, 2023 The common Western distinction between reason and emotion (which is not found outside Western-influenced traditions) tends to obscure an important distinction between two kinds of thinking: logical and mathematical reasoning, on the one hand, and, on the o ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Unavoidable Intentionality of Affect: The History of Emotions and the Neurosciences of the Present Day

Journal Article Emotion Review · July 1, 2020 The “problem of emotions,” that is, that many of them are both meaningful and corporeal, has yet to be resolved. Western thinkers, from Augustine to Descartes to Zajonc, have handled this problem by employing various forms of mind–body dualism. Some psycho ... Full text Open Access Cite

THE EURASIAN ORIGINS OF EMPTY TIME AND SPACE: MODERNITY AS TEMPORALITY RECONSIDERED

Journal Article History and Theory · October 1, 2016 Featured Publication Understood as a form of temporality, modernity is seen as consisting of empty time and space. However, careful examination of the origins of modern notions of empty time and space suggest they arose from background assumptions in wide use across Eurasia in ... Full text Cite

THE PARADOX OF MODERNITY: CURRENT DEBATES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Journal Article Modern Intellectual History · April 2, 2015 Featured Publication Full text Cite

Émotions et histoire contemporaine: Ésquisse d’une chronologie, pp. 29-44

Other Émotions contemporaines, XIX-XXe siècles, edited by Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu, Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini, Hélène Eck, Nicole Edelman (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014), · 2014 Cite

Neuroscience and the fallacies of functionalism.

Journal Article History and theory · January 2010 Smail's "On Deep History and the Brain" is rightly critical of the functionalist fallacies that have plagued evolutionary theory, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. However, his attempt to improve on these efforts relies on functional explanations ... Full text Cite

Reply from W. M. Reddy

Journal Article Emotion Review · January 1, 2010 Full text Cite

Saying Something New: Practice Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience

Journal Article Arcadia: International Journal for Literary Studies · March 2009 Featured Publication Cite

The anti-empire of general de Boigne: Sentimentalism, love, and cultural difference in the eighteenth century

Journal Article HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS-REFLEXIONS HISTORIQUES · 2008 Featured Publication Full text Cite

Comment on James M. Wilce, “Magical Laments and Anthropological Reflections”

Journal Article Current Anthropology 47(2006), No. 6 · 2006 Cite

The logic of action: Indeterminacy, emotion, and historical narrative

Journal Article History and Theory · January 1, 2001 Modern social theory, by and large, has aimed at reducing the complexity of action situations to a set of manageable abstractions. But these abstractions, whether functionalist or linguistic, fail to grasp the indeterminacy of action situations. Action pro ... Full text Cite

Emotional liberty: Politics and history in the anthropology of emotions

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · January 1, 1999 Full text Cite

Against constructionism - The historical ethnography of emotions

Journal Article CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY · 1997 Featured Publication Full text Cite

Response to Marc W. Steinberg

Journal Article Political Power and Social Theory · 1993 Cite

The Concept of Class

Chapter · 1992 Cite

L’argent et la liberté dans la France d’ancien régime

Journal Article Revue du Nord, Hors Série, Collection Histoire, · 1989 Cite

Response to Charles Tilly

Journal Article International Labor and Working Class History · January 1, 1985 Full text Cite

Family and factory: French linen weavers in the belle epoque

Journal Article Journal of Social History · January 1, 1975 Full text Cite

Family and Factory: French Linen Weavers in the Belle Epoque

Journal Article Journal of Social History · 1975 Cite

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions

Book This new series of monographs and edited collections covers a dynamic field of study - the history of emotions. The series will include work that re-evaluates past definitions of emotions; re-conceptualizes theories of emotional ‘development’ through histo ... Link to item Cite