Emotions, particularly unhappy ones, have generally been considered harmful to ‘good’ politics. Many canonical political thinkers warn of a threat to order, reason, and hierarchy where feelings of discontent gain sway over the people. Yet from ancient Greece to revolutionary France and throughout the decolonizing world of the twentieth century, other thinkers have contested this reading and defended the radical potential of these same emotions. Questions this course will ask include: how can we make sense of feelings across space and time? How does the dichotomy between reason and emotion demarcate ‘the mob,’ ‘the woman,’ and ‘the other’? Are negative feelings themselves a mode of resistance against oppression? In what ways have shared emotions mobilized collective action? Following some introductory readings on the political study of emotion, the bulk of the seminar will follow a two-session pattern. The first session of each week will approach canonical political thinkers through the lens of a particular emotion, such as Aristotle on anger, Hobbes on fear, and Nietzsche on ressentiment. In the following session, students will consider how the emotion in question has been complicated by contemporary theorists including Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, and Wendy Brown.TBA