New entries in “Religion and Urbanity online” (upload 2/2024)
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Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations Blog
New Glossary Entry: Mercantilisation
The definition of the term “mercantilisation” relates to the “processes of transforming social practices and objects into merchandise” (Ascher 2007, 28). Therefore, mercantilisation describes the basic transformation of human as well as non-human (inter)actions, any kind of artefacts and material residues like natural ressources and energies into services or commodities…
Congratulations to Simone Wagner on winning the Schöpflin prize
Simone Wagner has won the Johann Daniel Schöpflin Prize for her dissertation “Gender and Urbanity. The authority of abbesses and provosts in south-western collegiate churches”. In her dissertation she has analysed how the authority of abbesses and provosts in collegiate churches was constructed and to what extent gender and urbanity influenced their authority…
Running in the city forest: 87th Steiger (spring) run
Tom Hamilton, Associate Professor in Early Modern European History at Durham University, UK and fellow of the Max Weber Centre in summer 2024, took part in the 87th Steiger (spring) run in Erfurt. They met on 21 April 2024 in Erfurt, Am Reitplatz. The race comprises several parts and always takes place in spring…
Moving Stairways to Heaven: How Singapore’s Megachurches Navigate Urban Infrastructures
How do megachurches, with several thousand worshippers per week, find space in a densely populated city-state like Singapore, characterized by limited space? The urban landscape and use of city space are tightly regulated by the government. Fast-growing neo-Pentecostal megachurches, needing large auditoriums for their worship services, often fail to gain permission from the state to build churches that cater to 5,000 or more worshippers…
Congratulations to Christopher Degelmann on receiving the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prize 2024!
Our former fellow Christopher Degelmann has been awarded with the prestigious Heinz Meier-Leibnitz prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Meier-Leibnitz prize is the most important award presented by the DFG to early career researchers…
Researching Fictional Entanglements of Religion and a Dystopian Urban Imagination
A press photograph portrays a woman wearing an old-fashioned white bonnet and a red mantle, her mouth covered by a cloth of the same colour. Her clothing is a reference to a widespread dystopian narrative initiated by Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 that has become a global narrative thanks to numerous media adaptations, and particularly the successful Hulu TV series released from 2017 onwards…
Quellenworkshop zur Geschichte des Todes in der Frühen Neuzeit
KFG Fellow Edmund Kizik (Universität Gdansk) und Kerngruppenmitglied Martin Christ führen am 03. Juli 2024 einen Workshop zu frühneuzeitlichen Quellen über die Bedeutung und den Umgang mit den Toten durch.
Conference Announcement: Making Boundaries 2025
The KFG « Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations » is announcing its next annual conference, which will take place in Erfurt from the 4th to 6th June 2025. The topic is Making Boundaries – Performing Religion and Urbanity.
‘Of Looseness and Depravity’ – Contextualising Magdalene Asylums
Why was the Seán Mc Dermott St Magdalene asylum – which contained also a Magdalene Laundry – located where it was? And how does this placing relate to discourses on Irish women in the city? The article offers an introduction to the historical context of the Magdalene Laundries in nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland.
Latrines make urbanity ?!
Sara Keller, postdoc with the Religion and Urbanity group, on the link between waste infrastructures and urban lifestyles. Not just prestigious fountains in large public squares, luxurious bath houses and monumental stepwells are outstanding expressions of urbanity: latrines also can contribute to the production of an urban, cultured and sophisticated way of life.
“Garten und Religion?!” – Sonderbeitrag zum Thema Paradiesgarten
Masterstudierende der Uni Erfurt erarbeiteten gemeinsam mit Sara Keller einen Bereich in der Sonderausstellung zu “Garten und Religion?!”, die derzeit im Erfurter Gartenbaumuseum zu sehen ist. Im Seminar „Der Paradiesgarten als Idealraum“ setzten sich die Studierenden mit religiösen und philosophischen Konzepten auseinander, die von der Antike bis in die Frühe Neuzeit die Gestaltung persischer und indischer Gärten beeinflussten. Die sogenannten Charbagh (oder Chaharbagh) Gärten zeichnen sich durch eine geometrische Anordnung von Strukturen wie Einfriedungen, Wasserkanälen, Pavillons und Wegen aus, weisen aber auch eine üppige Flora auf.
“Thrill” and Intimidation by Means of Light and Darkness in the Pre-Modern Era – The Alter Einlass (Old Entrance) in Augsburg
Our former fellow Vera Henkelmann on the Old Entrance in Augsburg, once famous for its engineering. The power of the council and the city of Augsburg was thus demonstrated here by the ability to restrict sight, especially light, and thus to physically intimidate those entering, even to expose them to the demonic nature of darkness and gloom.
Some highlights from our blog
Since 2018 we have been publishing articles, reviews, reports and personal reflections on a variety of topics. In most cases they are tied in one way or an other to one of our research areas: South Asia, especially India and Pakistan, the Mediterranean from Antiquity until today, and Europe, especially in the Medieval and Early Modern period. We have picked some of our favourite entried by fellows and core group members of the Religion and Urbanity group in Erfurt.
Frischer Wind in alten Gassen: Zweitausend Jahre Stadtplanung
Eine Zeitreise in die Antike, das erste Jahrtausend v. Chr., und eine Reise aus Mitteleuropa in die Gegenden, in denen man zu schreiben verstand. Erst mit Hilfe der Schrift gelang es Expertinnen und Experten das flüchtige Element Wind so dauerhaft in Gedankengebäuden einzufangen, dass wir uns heute noch damit auseinandersetzen können.
City of Words
Review by Supriya Chaudhuri. In February last year I was in Hampi, Karnataka, once the sacral core of the city of Vijayanagara, capital of India’s last great Hindu empire. Sitting in the shadow of the Virupaksha temple, I read Salman Rushdie’s fifteenth novel, Victory City, a magical, intricate history of the foundation and destruction of the city of Vijayanagara, or Bisnaga, as it was called by the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes.
Archäologie aus der Ferne: Religion und Urbanität im spätantiken Nordsyrien
von Verena Fugger. Wenn es um das Thema „Archäologie in Syrien“ geht, werden den meisten LeserInnen dieses Blog-Beitrags vermutlich noch die durch zahlreiche Medienkanäle verbreiteten Bilder der Sprengung des Beltempels in Palmyra durch Gruppen der Terrormiliz Islamischer Staat am 31. August 2015 lebendig in Erinnerung sein. Abgesehen von der unfassbaren humanitären Katastrophe, die dieser Krieg über die Bevölkerung brachte, gehörten die Zerstörung und Plünderung archäologischer Fundstätten, historischer Altstädte wie jener von Aleppo und musealer Exponate zu den größten Gräueltaten des Terrorregimes. Unwiederbringlich verloren sind zahllose Kulturgüter, die – wenn sie nicht durch direkte Kriegshandlungen oder Vandalismus zerstört worden sind – ihren Weg aus den örtlichen Museen in den illegalen Kunsthandel und von dort mittlerweile auch nach Deutschland gefunden haben.
