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Tagged: Antiquity

Reading Religion Economically

The relationship between religion and economy involves materiality, spatiality, and temporality—and not a little imagination. Neither seeing religion as separate from the economy, nor as a superstructural projection of existing class relations, nor again as a commodity subject to rational selection within a “marketplace” of offerings, I propose to reread some “religious” texts and rituals in broadly economic terms and to reflect on the nature of religion more broadly…

Conference Report: KFG Annual Conference “Making Boundaries”

While the topic of boundaries has received considerable scholarly attention, this conference focussed on the dynamic processes of making, maintaining and modifying or crossing boundaries and brought together scholars from various disciplines discussing case studies from Europe, the Mediterranean and South Asia from Antiquity to today…

Conference Report: Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead

Dealing with the dead and death is a topic that attracts scholars of every period. The universal question of transitioning from one state-of-being into the other represents a basic process applicable to every human being. As we all die one day and become part of the dead, their whereabouts and treatment will eventually affect every one of us. That is why this conference’s topic Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead has a natural attraction to it because all of us will die one day and join the ranks of the dead…

Urbanität ohne Religion? Zwei Ausstellungen in München

In diesem Sommer bietet Bayerns Landeshauptstadt München gleich zwei Ausstellungen zu Stadt und urbanem Leben. Das Münchner Stadtmuseum zeigt mit “What the City. Perspektiven unserer Stadt” eine Ausstellung zu den vielen Städten (bzw. Facetten), in denen sich München als gewachsene Metropole zeigt. Sie reichen von Kunst und Kultur bis hin zu Nachhaltigkeit und der Gestaltung sowie Wahrnehmung durch die MünchnerInnen selbst. Die zweite Ausstellung ist in der Kunsthalle München in der Theatinerstraße. Sie feiert mit der Fotoausstellung “Civilisation: Wie wir heute leben” ihr 40-jähriges Jubiläum. Hier werden in ikonischen Bildern zivilisatorische Errungenschaften und Ambivalenzen in globaler Perspektive, aber zugleich intim pointiert als Fotografien, gezeigt…

2025 Entries in “Religion & Urbanity Online”

In 2025, there were 16 new entries in the database “Religion and Urbanity Online” so far. They cover the time span from antiquity to modernity, cities as different as Aleppo, Singapore and Sens, and approach religion and urbanity from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, literature studies and the history of religions. Enjoy reading!

How to write the history of religion in the making?

Traditional religious historiography attempts to grasp ‘religions’ in their becoming, possibly their founding, their slow or radical changes – similar to how urban historiography undertook. This brought transformations into view that, in the extreme case, could take on their own form in the splitting and splitting off of religious groups…

The KFG and the “Urban Multilingualism” Workshop Series

The KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” has an ongoing collaboration with the research project “Multilingualism in Eurasian Premodern Societies: Social Hierarchies and Space”, which is part of the Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations”. Three workshops are an important part of the “Multilingualism” project…

Comparing World Religions?

Today, the academic study of religion in the discipline widely called Religious Studies or Religionswissenschaft has developed into a large array of thematical fields and foci, of general approaches and source-specific methods. As such it is ranging from historical and anthropological disciplines through social sciences and economics to philosophies and theologies, either conceived as a proper discipline overlapping with these other disciplines or seen as a subdiscipline to the one or other of them. What I am advocating today is the use of a term defining the traditional object of Religious Studies, namely “religion” and its use for comparison on a global scale…

Historische Vorstellungen zwischen Fiktion und Geschichtserzählung

Die eigene Arbeit am Manuskript einer globalen Religionsgeschichte unter dem Fokus von „Religion und Urbanität“ wirft nicht nur Fragen nach den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Vergleichs, dem Umgang mit objektsprachlichen und metasprachlichen Terminologien und der ganz praktischen Frage der Stoffauswahl auf. Sie macht auch die Frage nach dem Übergangsfeld von historischem Erzählen und Fiktion auf…

Workshop: Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead (15-16 May 2025)

Critical studies of death (thanatology) have illuminated how human societies organize spaces of burial according to gender, race, class, sexual preference, and religion. Informed by these works “Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead” introduces how studies of death, especially of persons within groups excluded from systems of power in the living world, illuminate how the structures of power exceed life extending into the afterlives of the dead…

Urban life in a Roman military camp? Two examples from Switzerland: Vindonissa and Augusta Raurica

A Roman military camp, also known as a castellum or castrum, was a fortified place where soldiers lived and trained. The camps were located wherever the Roman Empire expanded and reached or created borders. They formed the starting point for military actions or were themselves the site of battles. Through their presence, the soldiers influenced the economy and the settlement area in the conquered territories. Many towns were founded by the Romans and still exist today.