The trajectory of an English professor's scholarly interests has always involved emotion. From the simple question she asked herself during her graduate study (what do we feel?), she moved to the beneficial psychological effects of writing, then onto empirically identifying the emotions involved in writing, to discussions of social emotions, to an emotional/cognitive continuum of emotion to where she is now--the deepest and most empirical root of emotion--the brain. Neuroscience research has discovered that nerve pathways lead directly to a small structure buried in the brain called the amygdala and that signals reach the amygdala 40 milliseconds before it reaches the intellectual part of the brain. Cognition, emotion, memory, and language come together in the brain, and that is why it should be studied. The amygdala influences what gets stored and the strength with which it gets stored because it "reads" emotion. The field of English has studied language from virtually every vantage point except from that of its potential for emotional intelligence. Little has been done to make visible and acceptable the salutary effects of emotion in writing education. As central as cognition is, without emotion, memory and learning could not occur. (Contains 43 references.) (RS)