Feeling Power by Megan Boler (1999, Paperback)

Megan Boler combines cultural history with ethical and multicultural analyses to explore how emotions have been disciplined, suppressed or ignored at all levels of education and educational theory. Feeling Power begins by charting the philosophies and practices developed over the last century to control social conflicts arising from gender, class and race. The book traces the development of progressive pedagogies from civil rights and women's liberation movements, to the author's recent studies of "emotional intelligence" and emotional literacy." She concludes by outlining a "pedagogy of discomfort" that examines the empathy, fear and anger to negotiate ethics and difference. Drawing on the formulation of emotion as knowledge within feminist, psychobiological and poststructuralist theories, Boler develops a unique theory of emotion missing from contemporary educational discourses.