Honor and Shame in Western History

Jörg Wettlaufer is head of the Digital Academy at the Academy of Sciences and Humanties in Lower Saxony at Göttingen, Germany. He is doing research in the history of law, evolutionary anthropology, and digital history with a focus on the social usage of shame in medieval society. David Nash is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University. He has written and published extensively on the history of atheism, blasphemy, and shame. He has advised governments in the UK, the European Union, and Australia on the issue of blasphemy laws and their repeal. Jan Frode Hatlen is head of the Department of Historical and Classical Studies, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He earned his PhD in history from NTNU in 2015. His reseach ranges from gender and honor in Late Roman society, to learning and teaching history in higher education.

Part I: - Honor and Shame: Concepts and Challenges

1. The Unwieldy Phenomenon of Honor

Dagmar Burkhart

2. Shame: A Social Emotion and Its Cultural Concepts in a Historical (European) Perspective

Jörg Wettlaufer

3. Zero-Sum Emotions and Shame-Honor Dynamics

Richard Landes

Part II: Honor and Shame in Traditional European Societies

4. Honor-Shame Dynamics in Late Antiquity: Balance and Control

Jan Frode Hatlen

5. Gregory of Tours on Sichar and Chramnesind

Richard Landes

6. Better to die in honor than to live in shame?: A Comparative Approach to the Literary Dynamics of Honor and Shame in French Chanson de Geste, Romance, and Fabliau (Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries)

Lisa Sancho

7. The Dynamics of Gender-Specific Honor and Shame in the Middle Ages. The Nibelungenlied as Example

Jutta Eming

8. The Emergence and Social Usage of Shaming Punishments in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries in Northwest European Cities

Jörg Wettlaufer

9. Christian Humility, Papal Humiliations: An Honor-and-Shame Criterion in the Church’s History Grand Narratives

Bénédicte Sère

Part III: Honor and Shame in Modernity

10. Collective Shame in the Modern World: The Case of Blasphemy Laws and Tolerant Sensibilities

David Nash

11. The Culture of American Dueling under Attack: The 1856 Public Beating of an Abolitionist Massachusetts Senator by a South Carolina Congressman

Kenneth S. Greenberg

12. Brought Up with Shame: Trans-Generational Perspectives on Disciplinary Correction in Finland during the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Satu Lidman

13. Plato, MeToo, the Honorable, and the Others

Hege Dypedokk Johnsen

14. Shame, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Britain

David Nash