"Moving compellingly through a series of instruments drawn from the histories of experimental psychology, psychiatric photography, and spiritualism, Grant Bollmer provides an important materialist rebuke to the liberatory strain in affect theory, which frequently treats affect as 'an eternal truth of the body rather than a momentary fragment.'"--David Parisi, author of Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing " The Affect Lab argues that beneath affect theory lies media. Far from being natural or biological--and, most fundamentally, far from being universal--affect is the product of the concrete technical operations that are necessary to access it in the first place. By challenging affect theory to examine its own technical basis, The Affect Lab will reboot the field for our times and, in the process, fundamentally change our views of how affect operates and the roles it plays in lived experience."--Mark B. N. Hansen, author of Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media "This book is one of the best histories of technology in the field of psychological research to date. It will find a receptive audience in the fields of science and technology studies, media studies, and psychology.

"-- CHOICE "[ The Affect Lab ] builds to a thoughtful and compelling case to take seriously the ways we measure in our construction of what we think affect and emotion is, and the somewhat provocatively chosen examples provide an entertaining and enjoyable entry point to the very human origins of how we think about who we are."-- Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences "Bollmer's book offers a far-reaching and engaging study of four moments in the history of the emotions. It highlights as yet underappreciated connections between traditions of spiritualism, aesthetics, education, therapy and measurement."-- The British Journal for the History of Science.