How religious beliefs and practices naturalised different emotions and deployed them to model behaviour and enrich experience of the supernatural.
Image: Piëta, Hendrick Goltzius, 1596. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.
Religious ways of thinking and doing were fundamental to the social, cultural and political world of pre-modern Europe. The borders between the physical and spiritual world were porous and reality was constituted by the flow of agents and forces interacting between these worlds. Human emotions like fear, hope, sorrow, pity and joy were consequently shaped and also affirmed by these interactions between the supernatural and natural worlds.
This cluster will be wide-ranging with respect to the forms of religious thought and practice it considers through the different societal and confessional contexts of medieval and early modern Europe. Thematically, however, it will attempt to explore how religious belief and practice modeled and helped naturalize different emotional behaviors, how emotions were deployed to create the presence and power of the supernatural, and how different emotions were deemed more appropriate for the effective performance of religious practices and piety at different points in time and space.
Collaborating Members
A. Katie Harris (University of California, Davis)
Stephanie Thomson (The University of Adelaide)
See list of CHE members below.
Cluster Activities
'Devotion, Objects and Emotion, Emotion and Devotion, 1300–1700' symposium, The University of Melbourne, 16–17 March 2018. Convened by Charles Zika, Julie Hotchin, Lisa Beaven, Claire Walker.
Public Lecture: 'Luther and Dreams', by Prof. Lyndal Roper (Oxford), The University of Melbourne, 4 December 2017.
Four Emotions and Religion Cluster Panels, ANZAMEMS, Wellington, New Zealand, 7–10 February 2017
- 'Moving Hearts, Minds, and Bowels: Rhetoric and Religion in the Early Modern Period' (Jennifer Clement, Eleanora Rai, Kirk Essary)
- 'Nuns on the Move: Affect, Reform and Exile in Late Medieval and Early Modern Convents' (Julie Hotchin, Claire Walker, Claire Renkin)
- 'At the Intersection of Religion and Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England' (Judith Bonzol, Elizabeth Connolly, Ursula Potter)
- 'Fighting Threats to Religious Authority at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century: Atheism, Witchcraft and Vampirism' (Charles Zika, Julie Davies, Michael Pickering)
'Religious Materiality and Emotion' Symposium, The University of Adelaide, 17–18 February 2017 (Keynotes: Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London), Monique Scheer (Tübingen), Charles Zika (Melbourne) – organised by Julie Hotchin and Claire Walker
Public Lecture: Professor Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London), 'The Virgin Mary: A History in Matter and Emotion', The University of Adelaide, 16 February 2016 – organised by Claire Walker
'Early Modern Literature, Sermons and the Rhetoric of the Passions', The University of Queensland, 14 August 2015 – organised by Jennifer Clement
Three Emotions and Religion Cluster Panels, ANZAMEMS, The University of Queensland, 14–18 July 2015
- 'Fear, Devils, and Witches in the Religious Economy of Early Modern Europe' (Abaigéal Warfield, Jenny Spinks, Charles Zika)
- 'Managing Senses, Bodies and Emotions in Early Modern English Religious and Medical Texts' (Jennifer Clement, Danijela Kambaskovic-Schwartz, Ursula Potter)
- 'Religious Dislocation, Conflict and Grief' (Lisa Beaven, Claire Walker, Yasmin Haskell)
Main Outcomes
Julie Hotchin and Claire Walker, 'Seeing, Touching & Feeling the Divine: Materiality and Devotion in Religious Cloisters', CHE Blog, 18 March 2016
For publications and papers, see the websites of individual cluster members.
Forthcoming Events sponsored by the Cluster
'Religion and Emotion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, c.1100–1800' symposium, The University of Adelaide, 22–23 November 2018. Convened by Stephanie Thomson and Jessica McCandless.
Contacts
Claire Walker (claire.i.walker@adelaide.edu.au)
Charles Zika (c.zika@unimelb.edu.au)