Hope and Fear: Environments and Stress
WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH / 11AM–1PM / BOOK HERE
In this session Dr Jill Kirby (History) will guide an exploration of the history of stress and how it is linked to environment through ideas about both causes and treatments for the stressed. We will examine why stress very rapidly developed as a concept in the second half of the twentieth century and also consider its predecessor (‘nerves’) and the reasons that were suggested for why so many people were suffering from both ‘nerves’ and then stress across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. In doing so we will consider ideas including: the effects of the built environment; ‘suburban neurosis’; workplace stress; nuclear fear; eco-stress and ‘nature deficit disorder’. We will also discuss and critique ways in which the environment has been mooted as a treatment for mental health across the whole period.
Jill Kirby ‘Feeling the strain: a cultural history of stress in twentieth-century Britain’ (Manchester, MUP) 2019, Introduction and Conclusion
WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH / 11AM–1PM / BOOK HERE
In this session Dr Jill Kirby (History) will guide an exploration of the history of stress and how it is linked to environment through ideas about both causes and treatments for the stressed. We will examine why stress very rapidly developed as a concept in the second half of the twentieth century and also consider its predecessor (‘nerves’) and the reasons that were suggested for why so many people were suffering from both ‘nerves’ and then stress across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. In doing so we will consider ideas including: the effects of the built environment; ‘suburban neurosis’; workplace stress; nuclear fear; eco-stress and ‘nature deficit disorder’. We will also discuss and critique ways in which the environment has been mooted as a treatment for mental health across the whole period.
Jill Kirby ‘Feeling the strain: a cultural history of stress in twentieth-century Britain’ (Manchester, MUP) 2019, Introduction and Conclusion