‘Keep calm and carry on’?

Times of crisis are moments of great emotional upheaval, but there has been surprisingly little research into the exact role that these emotions play. How do different actors express emotions and how are these expressions valued by others? These questions are the basis for an investigation into three moments of societal crisis in twentieth-century Netherlands: a flood in 1926 and its aftermath, the closing of the coal mines in the ‘60s and ‘70s and the aids epidemic in Amsterdam in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The case studies cover the twentieth century and are all different in nature, which allows for insights into possible recurring emotional scripts. To investigate the emotions expressed by victims, in the media and by the government as well as their responses to each others emotional expressions, a wide variety of source material is used, ranging from newspaper articles to speeches and from diary entries to parliamentary papers.