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Tagged: India

Indo-German Exchanges in Religion and Aesthetics: Insights from Dr. Isabella Schwaderer

This interview marks the beginning of a series in which Ahmad Ali will be engaging with scholars working on India at the Max-Weber-Kolleg. He is a student of Religionswissenschaft at the University of Erfurt, currently working on the project “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations”.

The Seasons of Maritime Life

Port towns host unique forms of urban life, and they are often seen as particularly vibrant and dynamic cities. Maritime metropolises on all continents, such as Shanghai, New York, Bombay, Hamburg or Marseille, have gained a reputation of being exceptionally busy, diverse and connected places. This is also true of maritime cities of the past, and archaeology and history tell us that historical port towns were already busy, diverse and connected places…

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…

Walking through the streets of Calicut (IV)

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to walk the streets of Calicut again. During my last visits (in March 2023 and January 2024), I didn’t really get around to it because I was in Feroke (on the southern bank of the Chaliyar river) for most of the time. Only once did I allow myself to drive into the city for a few hours to stock up on spices. I usually take an auto rickshaw (or tuk tuk), an incredulous choice for my fellow Indians. Couldn’t I, the European, afford a proper taxi?…

An early modern representation of the square augmented city in M. Eruvin 5:1 from the Surenhuys Latin tAn early modern representation of the square augmented city in M. Eruvin 5:1 from the Surenhuys Latin translation of the Mishnahranslation of the Mishnah

Podcast: Making New Faith In/Visible

On 6 and 7 June 2024, the “Religion and Urbanity” research group held an international workshop in Erfurt entitled “Making New Faith In/Visible.” Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, the workshop delved into the critical, yet often underexplored question of how religious movements negotiate their visibility—or invisibility—within urban settings…

“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.

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.

City of Words

Review by Supriya Chaudhuri. In February last year I was in Hampi, Karnataka, once the sacral core of the city of Vijayanagara, capital of India’s last great Hindu empire. Sitting in the shadow of the Virupaksha temple, I read Salman Rushdie’s fifteenth novel, Victory City, a magical, intricate history of the foundation and destruction of the city of Vijayanagara, or Bisnaga, as it was called by the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes.

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.