Think With! From Emotional to Affective Communities to Collective Experience
Piroska Nagy
Université du Québec à Montréal
28 March 2025, 15.00-17.00
University of Florence, SAGAS Department, Via San Gallo 10, Aula Parva
Mediterranean Emotions – A Global Research Hotspot
Seminar Series “Emotional Grammars of Globalization”
GMeet Link: meet.google.com/rof-cvgp-qro
Abstract
This seminar starts with discussing the notion of emotional communities from the point of view of a historian who works mainly in French, where émotions do not mean exactly what emotions mean in English. Reflecting on the semantic differences between languages helps to think, what emotions mean from one language to the other : English, French, Italian, which all have their affective vocabularies. I contend that translating the extraordinary analytical tool emotional communities of Barbara Rosenwein in French would be more correct by communautés affectives. Then, two examples taken from the 13th century will help to show the difference I make between an affective community, and a community of emotion and experience.
Speaker’s Bio
Piroska Nagy is professor of medieval history at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. Since her PhD, Le Don des larmes au Moyen Age (Ve-XIIIe s.), Paris 2000, she has mostly worked on the history and historiography of emotions. She launched and managed with Damien Boquet the first French research program on the history of emotions, EMMA, EMotions au Moyen Age, producing a series of publications (2007-2022). They co-authored Sensible Moyen Age. Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval, Paris, 2015, translated in English (Medieval Sensibilities, Polity, 2018) and in Italian (Medioevo sensibile, Carocci, 2018). She is currently working on collective emotions and experiences.
Flagellanti e San Bevignate - Affreschi dx dell'abside, San Bevignate complex, Municipality of Perugia, Wikimedia Commons CC BY SA 3.0
Ultimo aggiornamento
19.12.2025