ABSTRACT
This volume in the New Agendas in Communication series includes essays from the contributors to the October 2008 conference on “Political Emotions: Affect and the Public Sphere,” which was jointly organized by Janet Staiger, Ann Cvetkovich, and Ann Reynolds at the University of Texas. For our introduction, each of us has written a perspective on the value of the work both within the context of other on-going work that served as the stimulus for the conference and as innovative work from young scholars who contribute to the field of understanding communication. While our introductions come from different perspectives-Staiger is in film and media studies, Cvetkovich is in English literature, and Reynolds is in art history, and all three of us work in women’s and gender studies-the crossing of views, observations, and feelings hopefully illuminates the great intellectual satisfaction we experienced in the project. The essays, as well, should evince the richness of the work in this growing area of research.
