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Work group
Religion and Secularity (Senior Fellow)
Hélène Miard-Delacroix is Professor for history at Sorbonne university Paris. Her areas of research are the history of Germany since 1945, Franco-German relations and the construction of Europe in the contemporary period and up to the present day. Her work on the history of Franco-German relations is marked by a desire to go beyond comparatism and write a mixed history that takes account of the entanglements and interactions between the two countries. She is thus continuing the cross-history approach adopted in her volume on the history of Franco-German relations since the Elysée Treaty, published in 2011, Le défi européen. Her current research focuses on the history of emotions in international relations and the interaction between diplomacy and public opinion. In the summer term 2023 and the winter term 2023-2024, she is a senior fellow at the KFG in Munich and works on a research project on Emotions in 1989: The Secularized Emotional Regime in France and Germany Facing the World’s Turmoil.
Research Project
Emotions in 1989: The Secularized Emotional Regime in France and Germany Facing the World’s Turmoil
The semantics of emotions such as outrage and dismay in international reactions to the spectacular events of 1989–90 will be analyzed in a comparative approach. The focus will be on European reactions to the massacre on Tian'anmen Square, the fall of the wall in the GDR, and the overthrow of Ceaușescu in Romania. Emotions and the construction of "emotional regimes" depict various value systems with universal and particular components during a moment of rapid change and the dissolution of certainties in Europe. With France and the Federal Republic of Germany as examples, the religious references in the secularized emotional regime of the West will be analyzed. In doing so, the semantics of outrage and compassion will be examined, in particular, in the ways in which these emotions are mobilized in relation to religiously and secularly defined human rights in processes of interpretation, argumentation, and decision-making.
Hélène Miard-Delacroix | Emotions in 1989. The Secularized Emotional Regime in France and Germany Facing the World’s Turmoil as video and podcast on Wissenschaftsportal L.I.S.A.