Kolloquium: Rational Enthusiasts: Handling the Ambivalence of Fervor

The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its summer semester 2017 colloquium.

Monique Scheer, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Rational Enthusiasts: Handling the Ambivalence of Fervor

Religion has long been viewed as emotional, and the rejection of religion has gone hand-in-hand with a valorization of rationality. And yet, in recent years, an ‘atheist awakening’ and battle for secular politics has demanded of many nonreligious people that they get emotional about their cause. In addition, the angry tone of New Atheism is being countered by trends toward a more joyful ‘soft atheism’ by secular humanist groups who ‘borrow’ emotional practices from religion. However, these are not always easy for secular people to execute. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Berlin, this talk will explore the reasons why.

Monique Scheer is professor of historical and cultural anthropology at the University of Tübingen. From 2008-2011 she was a researcher at the MPIB Center for the History of Emotions. For many years, her research has focused on popular religious practices in modern Germany from an historical and ethnographic perspective, for which she won the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Walter de Gruyter prize in 2011. Her most recent work focuses on the anthropology and history of emotions, which she seeks to integrate into a theory of practice, bringing not only ‘culture’, but also the encultured, socialized body into the analysis of emotional practices.