“Anker’s bookis a powerful, insightful examination of the ways that melodrama shapes contemporary articulations of political subjectivity and sovereignty…. [Her] bold and creative analysis will significantly shape readers' understanding of contemporary political discourse…. Highly recommended.”
- R. W. Glover (Choice) “Orgies of Feeling remains, on the whole, a nuanced and incisive text…. I have no doubt that this book will be of great interest to scholars across the fields of politics studies, cultural studies, literary and film studies, American studies and affect and emotion studies.”
- Carolyn Pedwell (Theory & Event) "Orgies of Feeling [is] a deeply compelling and smart work that itself defies genre convention, standing between political theory, cultural studies, and media studies.... This is a largely successful book, one that will surely have a significant impact on the field."
- Vincent Lloyd (American Studies) "This book is a powerful and important book, unravelling familiar events and ideas from a new perspective. It engages the reader in manifold sensitive methods with the political binaries with which we are offered to construct our political lives and the techniques by which they are constructed."
- Dana Mills (Political Theory) "Anker’s book is powerful, well researched, and important for scholars interested in American culture, political theory, and September 11, 2001."
- Susan Jeffords (Journal of American History) "Important, imaginative, at times dazzling, [Orgies of Feeling] offers a major interpretation of recent politics and an inspiring example of what political theory can be now. . . . Elizabeth Anker has given us a work to think with and learn from for years to come."
- Mark Reinhardt (Perspectives on Politics) "Orgies of Feeling provides a critical, original, and important contribution to the fields of political and literary theory and cultural studies, and should be widely read."
- Tyler J. Pollard (symploke) "... timely, well-composed. . . . [A] major contribution by solidly establishing the ideological work accomplished by familiar feelings.This work teaches us to recognize and assess conventional feelings produced by narratives of a heroic critical resistance to stale orthodoxy and treat with some skepticism claims to have discovered a triumphant freedom-including freedom lying beyond the shores of critique."
- Caren Irr (American Literature) "The greatest triumph of [Orgies of Feeling], then, is that it not only explains the support behind state-sanctioned warfare after 9/11 but helps us understand the ramifications of political melodrama in our present moment."
- Koel Banerjee (Cultural Critique)
