Emotional Devices: Attachments and Enchantments in a Changing Social World

Honourary lecture with Monique Scheer.

New technologies are beginning to profoundly challenge some of the core concepts of the history and anthropology of emotions. This lecture will explore what this field’s perspectives could contribute to the interdisciplinary discussion around what kind of social actor artificial intelligence will or should become.

The lecture will be held in honour of Monique Scheer’s appointment as honourary doctor at the University of Copenhagen.

Bio 

Monique Scheer is Professor of Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen, where she currently also serves as Vice-President for International Strategy and Diversity. Her ethnological research combines historical and ethnographic methods in the study of Christianities and secularities, the history of emotions, and religious and cultural diversity in Germany. Recent publications: Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany (Oxford UP 2020), Secular Bodies, Affects, and Emotions: European Perspectives (edited with N. Fadil and B. S. Johansen, Bloomsbury 2019) and The Public Work of Christmas: Difference and Belonging in Multicultural Societies (edited with P. Klassen, McGill-Queen's UP 2019). Since 2020, she has also been co-director of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Society at the University of Tübingen.