Thoughts on the study of emotions: reflections on teaching about Australia's foreign wars to university students

This article reflects on a course on Australia's foreign wars taught at The University of Western Australia in the light of new insights that emerge from the study of emotions in history. Situating the history of emotions in Australia's war history has the potential to provide us with additional understandings. The Anzac legend, in particular, provides a number of discourses within which the study of emotions might flourish, two examples being the 'myth of the digger' and the commemoration of the dead. One way of discussing emotions in these contexts is through an analysis of the 'authorised' and the 'unauthorised'; another, through the public and the private. These categories are always connected, so, in addition to exploring them, we should seek to unravel the relationships between them.