Joana Serrado 
The Discovery of Anxiousness 
Philosophy and Mysticism in Baroque Portugal

Are anxiety or dread negative stages before freedom, a confrontation with humans’ own mortality and finitude? Joana Serrado inaugurates anxiousness as a category of mystical knowledge in this innovative historical and philosophical study. Based on the life and mystical writings of Joana de Jesus, a Cistercian nun, intellectual disciple of Teresa of Avila, this study shows the cultural embeddedness of anxiousness: a feeling akin to the Portuguese term »saudade« (yearning, Sehnsucht). A mystical project that reshapes feminist principles of autonomy, agency and desire.

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Joana Serrado, born in 1979, is an assistant professor at the Chair of Iberian Cultural Studies at the Technical University of Chemnitz. After studying philosophy, medieval studies and religion in Coimbra, Porto and Berlin, she completed her doctorate in the history of ideas and Christianity at the University of Groningen, funded by the Portuguese Research Council. Previous research posts include the Harvard Divinity School (Fulbright Fellow), the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Oslo (Yggdrasyl doctorate fellow), the University of Oxford (Gordon Millburn Junior Research Fellow in Mysticism and religious Experience) and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz.