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Tagged: Contemporary

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.

Subjective and Objective Urbanity?

Mariia Orobinska, a former fellow with us in Erfurt, approaches the concept of urbanity from the angle of paradigmatic analysis in linguistics. It establishes the relationship between subjective and objective aspects of urbanity, which is viewed as a unique feature of a given place and characterized through “charm”, “atmosphere”, and “aesthetics”.

Epsita Halder awarded prize for “Reclaiming Karbala”

Our fellow Dr Epsita Halder, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University (Kolkata), was awarded a prize by the Indian History Congress at its latest session at Kakatiya University in Waragal for her monograph “Reclaiming Karbala – Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslisms”

From a letter to an oppressive symbol – notes on >Z<

Our fellow Claudine Moulin on the metamorphoses of the letter >Z< in the current war on Ukraine. At first glance, Z is thus doubly coded in the context of the Ukraine invasion – once in a pro-Putin / pro-Russian context, once in the context of its interpretation as a symbol of Russian totalitarianism and a war of aggression in violation of international law.

Panel Report: City Branding: Urbanity and the Construction of City Images in Europe and South Asia

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.

Religious Ambivalences: Podcasts I

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.

Buddhismus und die vietnamesische Diaspora in Erfurt

Die Errichtung eines Tempels in Gispersleben läutet eine neue Ära für das interkulturelle Zusammenleben in Erfurt ein. Dieses neue Gotteshaus nahmen wir als Anlass, uns mit dem vietnamesisch-buddhistischen Leben in Erfurt genauer zu beschäftigen. Es ist erst der dritte sichtbare Tempel in den neuen deutschen Bundesländern.

2023 Annual Conference: Ambivalences of Religion

Aiming at sharpening a heuristic grid for the study of the mutual formation of religion and urbanity, the focus of the conference lies with concepts of religion that address material, socio-spatial, temporal, and power-related issues with a view on religious complexity in general and religious ambivalences in particular. The ultimate aim is to better grasp the entanglement between religion and urbanity and the ways urban and religious practices and ideas can change through the interferences of these internal tensions.