Inheriting the Family : Objects, Identities and Emotions

This open access book uses new methodologies from the history and sociology of emotions to analyse why people select specific tokens of family inheritance, and how this influences personal identity, cultural heritage, and national memory. Much of our cultural heritage emerges from family histories – with many of the objects curated in museums, stories passed between generations, and monuments marking notable figures being the direct product of familial collections, donations, and investments. This edited collection uses emotion as an analytical tool to interpret such behaviours, and offers novel ways to investigate how and why family inheritances from a range of social, racial, and ethnic groups maintain their cultural power, as they move through time and from the private to the public spheres. Drawing on a variety of case studies, and exploring items ranging from Victorian library chairs, to quilts, religious texts, and pieces of intergenerational writing – this volume considers the role of objects and inheritances in the emotional lives of individuals and families, and acknowledges them as agents in the creation of histories and identities. Combining insight from scholars of the history of emotions with that of historians and researchers situated outside the academy, this collection allows fresh insights on family history and material culture to emerge. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UK Research and Innovation.

Katie Barclay is Professor and Future Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. She writes widely on the history of emotions, gender, and family life. With Kate De Luna and Giovanni Tarantino, she is the editor of Emotions: History, Culture, Society.

Lucy Noakes is Rab Butler Chair of Modern History at the University of Essex, UK.

Tanya Evans is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Applied History at Macquarie University, Australia, where she teaches public history and modern history

Rohan McWilliam is Professor of Modern British History and Co-Director of the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. He has written extensively on the history of radicalism from the 19th century onwards and is the editor of (with Jonathan Davis), Labour and the Left in the 1980s (2017). He writes regularly on politics for The Conversation and other publications and has commented on current affairs for, amongst other outlets, The Observer and Times Radio.

Joanne Begiato is a Professor of History and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange at Oxford Brookes University, UK.