Institute of Historical and Cultural Anthropology

Prof. Dr. Monique Scheer

Research interests

In her teaching and research, Monique Scheer brings perspectives from the history and anthropology of emotions together with issues around belief and conviction, religious and secular, and how they play out in social settings characterized by cultural and religious pluralism. Her five-year collaborative project with Prof. Pamela Klassen (University of Toronto) on Religion and Public Memory in Multicultural Societies, funded by Klassen’s Anneliese Maier Research Prize (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) also addresses the importance of public rituals and sites of memory (see The Public Work of Christmas, 2019). Scheer’s approach to the study of emotion is grounded in practice theory (see her article in History and Theory, 2012) and combines historical and ethnographic methods (see her monograph, Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany, 2020). She has also contributed to research on the centrality of bodily comportment and emotional practices for secular subjects (see Secular Bodies, Affects, and Emotions, 2019). She has published widely on popular religious practices in modern Germany, for which she was recognized by the Walter de Gruyter prize from the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2011. These topics include: the shifting meanings of black madonnas from the 17th to 20th centuries (see article in the American Historical Review 2002), Marian apparition cults in Cold War Germany (Rosenkranz und Kriegsvisionen, 2006, as well as numerous book chapters in English), and the emotional practices of Protestant worship. These topics intersect with her interest in the history of knowledge production and circulation, particularly regarding constructions of race and ethnicity in the cultural sciences in Europe (Doing Anthropology in Wartime and War Zones, 2010).

Biography

Education
B.A., Stanford University, History, 1989
M.A., University of Tübingen, 2000
Dr. rer. soc., University of Tübingen, 2006
Academic positions
2002 - 2007 Research fellow (doctoral and postdoc), Collaborative Research Center (SFB 437) on War Experience, University of Tübingen
2008 - 2011 Research fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
2011 - 2014 Assistant Professor, University of Tübingen, Dept of Hist. and Cult. Anthropology
2014 - Professor, University of Tübingen, Dept of Hist. and Cult. Anthropology

Link to full CV

Publications

Recent Publications

Language and Feeling in Ritual Practice (Blog entry for symposium on Say What Your Longing Heart Desires). In: Contending Modernities, University of Notre Dame, December 2, 2021 https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/language-feeling-practice/.
Mission and Protection. Bringing Fátima to West Germany in the Early Cold War Years. In: Peter Jan Margry (ed.): Cold War Mary. Ideologies – Politics – Marian Devotional Culture. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020, pp. 285–306.
How does diversity make us feel? Exploring the emotional regimes of multicultural societies. In: Jan Hinrichsen et al. (eds.), Diversities. Theories and Practices. Festschrift for Reinhard Johler. Tübingen: TVV, 2020, pp. 61-83.
Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/enthusiasm-9780198863595?lang=en&cc=de
Full list of publications

Academic Activities, University Service