Emmanuelle Friant holds a doctorate in Early Modern History from the Université de Lorraine, France. She teaches at the Université de Montréal in Canada, where she completed her postdoctoral studies.
Specialist of the material culture of Catholics during the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, her research examines the appropriation of private objects of devotion in the French Atlantic so as to highlight the role such objects played in constructing the identities – whether individual or collective – of believers.
Her current project is situated at the intersection of studies of the senses, the body, and the emotions. This work aims to historicize the sense perception of French subjects under the Ancien Régime by interrogating early modern notions of sacred space. She therefore takes particular interest in the practice of the Rosary and the experience of touch as a sense that provokes the “intimisation” of spiritual experience.
