Emotions and the Biblical World (EABS)

Call For Papers: Emotions, Communities, Identities: Over the last twenty years, much research has been devoted to the connection between emotions, social formations, and identity. For William Reddy, “emotional regimes” are imposed by the ruling elite, while “emotional shelters” allow for alternative emotional standards. Medievalist Barbara Rosenwein, however, argued that most societies present a more complex organization: dominant emotional norms are partly embraced and partly rejected by subordinate groups. She proposed the concept of “emotional community”—a group that values (or devalues) the same set of emotions, which function as an internalized sense of identity. Benno Gammerl proposed the notion of “emotional styles,” expressing the fluidity of an identity based on emotion(s), in its ability to transcend other boundaries. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Monique Scheer defines emotions as embodied practices. Since the body is always socially shaped and conditioned, there is no dichotomy between a “natural” body and emotional norms. In Margaret Wetherell’s words, “affective practices sediment in social formations”; emotions are formative of communities as much as communities construct a frame in which emotions are experienced. In our 2018 session, we welcome a broad range of papers that address the connection between emotions, social groups, and identities. We hope to bring together different methodologies and discuss texts from various time periods and cultural contexts (Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Second Temple Period and Hellenistic Judaism, New Testament, Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity).

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