Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations Blog

Architecture can induce Resonance – Hartmut Rosa on Sara Keller’s new book

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…

Upcoming: CoMOR exhibition in Leipzig

We are happy to announce the opening of the COMOR exhibition in Leipzig. The exhibition will be open to the public from 1 September until 15 October 2023 at the Altes Rathaus in Leipzig. The COMOR project – short for “Configutations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects. Routes (1350-1600) – took up the history of European fairs from the perspective of “market integrations”.

Water as an Urban Technology in Medieval India – An Introduction by Sara Keller

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.

Gewinner*innen im Schul-Wettbewerb „Stadt und Religion“

Die Kollegforschungsgruppe „Religion und Urbanität“ (FOR 2779) an der Universität Erfurt hat im vergangenen Jahr einen Wettbewerb ins Leben gerufen mit dem Ziel, die Begeisterung für die Geisteswissenschaften zu stärken. Schülerinnen und Schüler sollten ermuntert werden, aus der Perspektive unterschiedlicher Fächer, sich ihre Stadt in ihren Wechselbeziehungen zu den darin gelebten und sie beeinflussenden Religionen zu erschließen…

CfP: “Making inner urban boundaries” (EAUH 2024, Panel M6)

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.

Urban Monasticism Then and Now

Harry O. Maier discusses Mateusz Fafinski and Jakob Riemenscheider’s book, Monasticism and the City in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The book provides readers with a comprehensive exploration of ancient monastic and urban sites and their inhabitants, akin to a Lonely Planet travel guide. The authors examine monasticism from five aspects: as a genre, within and as cities, with respect to monks and nuns in urban settings, in terms of monastic learning, and as a phenomenon in Afroeurasia.

Gifts of Gratitude: Votive Objects in Rome and Thuringia

Votive objects, be it votive offerings, sacred dedications or ex voto, are gifts to the gods made by humans, set up in a sacred place for religious purpose. They are a feature of ancient and modern societies alike and are attested in diverse contexts and settings, sharing though a common scope: by setting up votive objects, the individuals seek to enter in communication with the gods.

Call for Applications: Fellowships 2024/25

The “Religion and Urbanity” research group invites applications for fellowships in the period of 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025. Fellowships are granted for a period of 3 to 6 months, beginning usually in March/April or September/October. The deadline is 1 October 2023.

Shifting Paradigms in Black Death Chronologies

After decades of doubt about the nature of the disease that caused the Black Death, the identification in 2011 of Yersinia pestis in a 14th-century London cemetery – and, most importantly, the revelation of its genetic proximity to current forms of the bacterium – closed that (sometimes harsh) debate, and demonstrated beyond all doubt the main role of paleogenomics in the future studies of historical epidemics, especially plague. However, the role of historians has not diminished with the arrival of this new protagonist in the field of disease history. On the contrary, the need for on-going multidisciplinary dialogue has become undeniable and mandatory, if the ultimate goal is effectively to advance knowledge about historical epidemic phenomena…

Urban Ressources (City Walk 10)

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…

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