Awards

• Winner of Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title 2023 (United States)

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9780812253399

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Reviews

Anyone who has ever felt compelled to force a tight smile, cast down your gaze, or make yourself small in the presence of authority needs to read this book. Such tactics, survival skills for navigating emotional power dynamics, have been fundamental to America's tragic history of race and human bondage. With passionate prose and deep insight, Dwyer shows how within antebellum slave society, feelings were not merely expressions of people's inner selves, they were also tools, weapons, and shields in life and death conflicts. And she makes it bracingly clear that in many of our affective norms and strategic performances of emotion, 'the sentiment left by slavery is still with us.' -Vincent Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War How did emotions-those of the enslaved and enslavers-shape the contours of slavery in the United States? Mastering Emotions is a rich, and much-needed, answer to that question, adding an important dimension to the study of an institution whose legacies still resonate. -Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Anyone who has ever felt compelled to force a tight smile, cast down your gaze, or make yourself small in the presence of authority needs to read this book. Such tactics, survival skills for navigating emotional power dynamics, have been fundamental to America's tragic history of race and human bondage. With passionate prose and deep insight, Dwyer shows how within antebellum slave society, feelings were not merely expressions of people's inner selves, they were also tools, weapons, and shields in life and death conflicts. And she makes it bracingly clear that in many of our affective norms and strategic performances of emotion, 'the sentiment left by slavery is still with us.' -Vincent Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

"""Within this study, Dwyer argues persuasively that for both slaveholders and the enslaved, emotion was used as a crucial tool of power and thus mastering one’s emotions, as the title suggests, was integral to navigating daily life under slavery...By emphasizing the central role that emotion played in the maintenance of and resistance to slavery, Dwyer is doing the vital work of urging us to recognize the pervasive role emotion--an often overlooked social and political force--continues to play in upholding racist power structures in today’s society."" * American Nineteenth Century History * ""In Mastering Emotions, Erin Austin Dwyer insightfully demonstrates how emotions shaped, maintained, and challenged the institution of slavery by examining the power dynamics of real and performative feelings between people who were enslaved and slave owners...Mastering Emotions covers considerable ground, examining a number of emotions from multiple angles and perspectives...Importantly, Dwyer's conclusion makes a strong case for further academic and cultural work to better understand the power dynamics of emotions within race relations since the abolition of slavery more than 150 years ago."" * The Journal of Southern History * """"Essential...Dwyer’s thoroughly documented study demonstrates that white southerners often dismissed the emotional capacity of Black people, especially when it came to separating enslaved families by sale...One of the many virtues of this volume is that Dwyer carries her story beyond emancipation into the Jim Crow era."" * Choice *"

Author Information

Erin Austin Dwyer is Assistant Professor of History at Oakland University.

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