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Tagged: Religion

„Hier gibt es kein Auferstehn“ – Religion und Urbanität in der Oper ‘Die tote Stadt’ (1920) von Erich Korngold

Von weitem ertönt Kindersang, die Kirchenglocken läuten. Feierliche Erwartung macht sich in der festlich geschmückten, mittelalterlichen Stadt breit. Der Gesang schwillt an, Frauen stimmen mit ein, lateinischer Mönchsgesang mischt sich in die hellen Stimmen. Immer lauter wird die Musik, die Prozession zieht heran. Auf dem Höhepunkt schreiten die Priester mit dem goldenen Schrein vorbei, in der sich die kostbare Heilig-Blut-Reliquie befindet. Der Gruppe folgt eine bunte Menge in liturgische Gewänder gehüllter Menschen, rote Chormäntel und Banner stechen hervor. Dieser ekstatische Aufzug lässt niemanden der Umstehenden kalt…

Kalimpong as Tibet’s Penumbra: Shangri-la, Lhasa, Delhi and Beijing

My interest in writing the hook-ups between the Chinese, Tibetan and Indian towns/cities was to map out the exchanges— politico-historical as well as socio-cultural— between them. Setting up my theodolite, taking measurements as it were,  Kalimpong the border town offered a unique vantage point in the eastern Himalayas…

Summer School Report: Performing Religion in the City – Urban Spaces, Interactions and Media

Amidst the plastered narrow alleys of Erfurt’s city centre, fittingly emblematic, it was a piece of light-coloured sandstone that inaugurated the Summer School Performing Religion in the City. Placed on the seminar tables of Erfurt’s International Meeting Centre by co-convenor Isabella Schwaderer, the stone fragments represented the material grounding of Erfurt as a city and its religious life. Retrieved from a ridge close to Gotha, the stone was used to build Erfurt’s landmark, the Erfurt Cathedral, and thereby, symbolically, foreshadowed the Summer School’s theme…

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…

„Religion, Urbanity and Sound “– 15th City Walk

Walking around in cities can be connected to hearing multiple things: People chatting, the tram and other vehicles passing by, church bells ringing, maybe even a melody coming from street musicians or an organ playing when passing a church. On our 15th City Walk on the 23rd of October, we explored how those and other sounds and music have an impact on Religion and Urbanity…

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…

Exploring Urban Religion in Poland: The Urban Religion Archive and the Religion Urbanity Mapping Project

This post introduces the Religion Urbanity Mapping (RUM) project. It started in 2021 with a dual focus. First, to rethink the concept of urban religion; and second, to apply this reframed concept in exploring the relatedness of religion and urbanity in the post-socialist CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) context. To date, the latter focus has been overlooked by urban studies and in the study of religion…

The Jewish Town of Izbica: History Inscribed in Space

In June, together with other members of the Urbanity and Religion research group, I went on an excursion to Mühlhausen. Our main aim was to visit the Thuringian state exhibition Freiheit 1525. 500 Years of the Peasants’ War. However, we also had time to take a walk through the beautiful historic town. As we were exploring the town, I came across a Stolperstein in memory of Leopold Löbenstein, who was deported in 1942 and, presumably, died in Izbica. This small town, located around 250 kilometres south-east of Warsaw, served as a transit ghetto during the Second World War, to which many Jews from Western Europe were deported…

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…

Book release of Accessing Water by Sara Keller

After the workshop organised in 2021 at the Augustinerkloster in Erfurt, Sara Keller edited a volume entitled Accessing Water in the South Asian City. The book published by Primus and released this August contains an introduction by Sara Keller and 9 chapters in a broad range of disciplines by Julia A.B. Hegewald, Julia Shaw, Jutta Jain-Neubauer, Nicolas Morelle, Padma Sunder Joshi, Prakhar Vidyarthi, Akil Amiraly, Heather O’Leary and Laura Verdelli…