Abstract: By examining disasters via the thematic fields of 'emotion', 'blame', and 'time', this edited volume opens up new viewpoints within historical disaster research.The introduction places the individual contributions in a theoretical context.Primarily, it underlines the importance of cultural studies contending that media are crucial in shaping human perception of destruction.After all, dissemination, interpretation, and signification take place primarily through cultural media.To fully grasp the meaning of a disaster to contemporaries and later generations, scholars should analyse representations of these events, using multidisciplinary methods of history, art history, and literary studies.Only then can we identify voice, medium, discourse, and communities involved in production, perception, and transmission of disaster experiences.Subsequently, it becomes possible to identify general patterns and, more importantly, to carefully scrutinise historical sources.