Urban Ambivalences
Opening comments by Susanne Rau, spokesperson of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group at the Max Weber Centre, given at the 2023 conference “Ambivalences of Religion” in Erfurt.
Opening comments by Susanne Rau, spokesperson of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group at the Max Weber Centre, given at the 2023 conference “Ambivalences of Religion” in Erfurt.
On h-soz-kult, you can now read the panel report by our fellow Heinrich Lang on the “Religion and Urbanity” panel at the 2023 Deutscher Historikertag in Leipzig. the panel “City Branding: Urbanity and the Construction of City Images in Europe and South Asia” was convened by Martin Christ, Sara Keller and Susanne Rau.
Over the course of the upcoming weeks, we will publish recordings of the introductory comments by participants of the 2023 “Religious Ambivalences” conference, organised by Elisa Iori and Jörg Rüpke in November 2023 in Erfurt.
KFG post-doc Dr. Sara Keller was interviewed by Anish Behti for the Podcast “Simplifying Lives”…
How did people try to avoid being robbed and how did they react when it happened? Wiśniewski, drawing from a complex and varied set of sources (including letters, petitions, hagiography and inscriptions) focused on the interface of religion and society, showing how people used various strategies like divination or seeking help from religious figures. Theft in his lecture appeared to us as a complex societal phenomenon, shaking the sometimes fragile trust in local communities.
During the late Middle Ages, Erfurt was a prosperous city with a dynamic trade center, and home to one of the first universities in Europe. While its success was a result of many factors, including its geographical location, few people are aware that the colour blue had a significant impact on the development of the city.
The ELLA series of lectures will bring to Erfurt the foremost experts in the field from Germany and abroad to discuss their research and to present new approaches on various aspects of this dynamic and fascinating time. In line with the focus of the “Urbanity and Religion” centre in Erfurt, a keen eye will be kept o the intersection of religion and urbanity.
Susanne Rau, Martin Christ and Sara Keller are convening a panel at this year’s Historikertag which will take place from 19 – 22 September 2023 in Leipzig. The speakers include current and former fellows of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group as well as established reseachers in the field of urban history.
Pius Malekandathil on how the city branding of Goa changed with Hapsburg rule in the 16th and 17th century. The Hapsburgs resorted to different mechanisms during this period to mask the internal contradictions within the city and to fill up the “hollowness” of the urban enclave of Goa and to prevent the Portuguese and Luso-Indians from moving away from the power centre of Goa to other enclaves. The fabrication and circulation of pride-evoking epithets like “Goa Dourada“ (Golden Goa) and religious metaphorical usages like “Rome of the East”, and the creation of ‘relic-loving’ devotees within the city were some of the mechanisms sought by the Hapsburgs not only to camouflage the harsh urban reality of Goa, but also to give a positive, if inflated, imagery of the city.
Architecture can induce resonance, but the effect remains unpredictable: here’s what we learned from the discussion between Hartmut Rosa and Sara Keller at the occasion of the Sara Keller’s book launch of Architektonische Resonanz. Das Mausoleum des indischen Sufi-Meisters Shah Vajihudin Alvi published with Schnell & Steiner…
Podcast of a lecture by Sara Keller in which she examined the question of the wide-ranging effects of global mobility and exchange on Indian societies and cities. The audio was recorded at the lecture series on “Global Exchanges”, organised by Elisa Iori and Mateusz Fafinski.
Sara Keller and Mateusz Fafinski, who jointly run the boundary formation focus group at “Religion and Urbanity”, are organising a panel at the European Association for Urban History 2024 conference in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Titled “Making inner urban boundaries”, the panel covers boundary making and the city; religion as producer of imagined and lived boundaries. The call for papers is now open.
Buildings embody people and ideas: what if this common metaphor were more than a rhetorical device? The author discusses the thesis that architecture can be intentionally designed to create a resonance between a built space and a living being…
At the beginning of the summer term we started with our 10th City Walk which was dedicated to the topic of urban ressources. Three stops in the Old Town of Erfurt gave us the opportunity to discuss different aspects of the subject: commercialism and different interpretations of poverty in past and present, in religious and more urban environments with the visit of the Second Hand Shop at the Johannesturm in Erfurt, monasticism and the ambivalence of wealth and poverty, production and contemplation at the Augustinian monastery, and, finally, the Collegium Maius and the St Michaelis church as two significant urban institutions of the Christian university life…
Historian and building archaeologist Sara Keller currently conducts a research project on Water and Water places in urban South Asia in the framework of the KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (FOR 2779). In this regard, she is particularly looking at gardens and green landscapes as spaces of urbanity…