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Category: Announcements

Announcements / Billets

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli publishes habilitation thesis: Citifying Jesus

Religion and urban life are the most successful strategies of handling, enhancing, and capitalizing on human sociability. By integrating religious studies, archaeology, and spatial theory, Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli aims to re-describe the formation of Christ religion as urban religion. Spanning almost four centuries of Christian literature from Paul to Augustine, the author shows that several characteristics commonly attributed to Christ religion are, in fact, outcomes of the distinct ways in which religious agents enact urbanity and interact with the urban space.

Announcements

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…

Announcements / Billets / Personal Reflections

“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.

Announcements / Billets

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.

Announcements / Billets / South Asia

Reclaiming Karbala: Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims (Routledge, 2023)

The new book by Epsita Halder, former fellow of the ‘Religion and Urbanity’ group, is titled ‘Reclaiming Karbala: Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims’. It was published in 2023 and studies the emergence and formation of a viable Muslim identity in Bengal over the late-19th century through the 1940s. Beginning with an explanation of significance of the martyrdom of Hazrat Muhammad’s grandson Husayn in the battle of Karbala (680 CE) for the Muslims, this book explores how this particular historical episode was recurrently reclaimed and reinterpreted by the Bangla-speaking ulama and Muslim literati to define what it meant to be Muslim in colonial Bengal.

Announcements / Billets / Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Talks & Papers

Urban and religious change: A comparative perspective

Jörg Rüpke. Religious change and changes of urbanity (summarizing urban practices and reflexive urban imaginations) must be analysed in their mutual dependency to give better accounts of both, urban history and religious history. Many crucial developments in local and trans-local religion and religions need to be reviewed with regard to their specifically urban conditionality. At the same time, such urban conditions and the very discourses and practices that defined conditions as urban have not been “independent variables” for religious change but are themselves in part the outcome of religious practices and agents.

Announcements / Concepts & Theory / Glossary

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…

Announcements / Billets

Call for Applications: Fellowships 2025-2026

The Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences/ Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations“ currently invites applications for research fellowships (3-6 months) in the period of 01.04.2025 to 30.09.2026.