ROSENWEIN, Barbara H.

About

Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ph.D. 1974, University of Chicago) is Professor Emerita at Loyola University Chicago.  An internationally renowned historian, she has been a guest professor at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France; the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France; the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands; the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Oxford University, England; Reykjavik University, Iceland.  Since 2009, Rosenwein has been an affiliated research scholar at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University in London.  She was a scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2001-2002 and was Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2003, where she is currently served as Fellows’ President

Rosenwein has lectured throughout the world, including France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Israel, Sweden, Taiwan, Australia, Italy, and Iceland.  Her scholarship has evolved.  Most recently she has become a historian of emotions, and her two general books on that topic (thus far) are Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion (Yale University Press, 2020), which takes the story from the Buddha to Twitter; and, most recently, Love:  A History in Five Fantasies  (Polity Press, 2021), which traces five of the longest-enduring stories we tell ourselves about love.  For a short and sweet preview of this book, see this YouTube video.

Rosenwein is also an active and passionate textbook author.  Her widely read A Short History of the Middle Ages, now in its sixth edition (University of Toronto Press, 2023) gives due space to a wider, more global, conception of the period 300—1500. It is accompanied by a new and attractively-priced reader: A Short Medieval Reader.  Her co-authored The Making of the West, always stressing cross-cultural and global exchanges, has just come out in its seventh edition (MacMillan, 2022). 

 These textbooks reflect Rosenwein’s initial and enduring interest in the history of the Middle Ages. Among her many monographs on that subject are To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property (Cornell University Press, 1989);  Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Cornell University Press, 1999); Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 1998); Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2006);  Generations of Feeling:  A History of Emotions 600-1700  (Cambridge University Press, 2016), translated into Italian: Generazioni di Sentimenti. Una Storia delle emozioni 600-1700, ed. and trans. Riccardo Cristiani (Viella, 2016); and (with co-author Elina Gertsman), The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2018).   

Rosenwein’s numerous articles include “Worrying about Emotions in History,” American Historical Review (2002); “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions,” Passions in Context: Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1/1 (2010), online at http://www.passionsincontext.de/.  These and many other articles may be found on her Academia.edu webpage.

Rosenwein has been recipient of many honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1992) and many NEH Fellowships.  In 2012, a conference was held at Auxerre, France, to honor her significant contributions to medieval history (De Cluny à Auxerre, par la voie des "émotions". Un parcours d'historienne du Moyen Âge) and in 2014 another conference was held at the Newberry Library, Chicago to honor her work (At the Intersection of Medieval History and the Social Sciences).  Most recently, she was honored in Paris, where she presented her intellectual autobiography, “Une vie dans l’interdiciplinarité:  la fabrication d’une médiéviste américaine, Les 5emes Journées du LaMOP (2017).

She was a Fellow of the Institute for Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in Fall, 2022.

Research Interests

European medieval history, history of emotions

Recent Visiting Professorships

University of Uppsala, Sweden, May, 2023

Reykjavik University, Iceland, May 2016

Oxford University (Trinity), May, 2015 (see http://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/home)

University of Dresden, Germany, March, 2015

University of Gothenburg, Sweden, March-May, 2014

Selected Publications

Love:  A History in Five Fantasies.  (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021).

Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020).

The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), with co-author Elina Gertsman.

What Is the History of Emotions? (Cambridge:  Polity Press, 2017), with co-author Riccardo Cristiani.

Generations of Feeling:  A History of Emotions, 600-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006; paperback, 2007).

Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Anger’s Past:  The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, editor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).

To Be the Neighbor of St. Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909‑1049 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).

Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).

A Short History of the Middle Ages (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001; 2d ed., 2004; 3d ed, University of Toronto Press, 2009; 4th ed, University of Toronto Press, 2014; 5th ed, University of Toronto Press, 2018)

The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (Boston: Bedford,  2001; 2d ed., 2005; 3d ed., 2009; 4^th ed., 2013), with Lynn Hunt, Thomas R. Martin, and Bonnie G. Smith.