Sara Keller interviewed by Anish Baheti
KFG post-doc Dr. Sara Keller was interviewed by Anish Behti for the Podcast “Simplifying Lives”…
KFG post-doc Dr. Sara Keller was interviewed by Anish Behti for the Podcast “Simplifying Lives”…
This case study focuses on the question of how Paris acquired metropolitan significance as early as the 6th and 7th centuries through the presence of rulers and important saints, although the city did not historically occupy a prominent position among the cities of Gaul and was hardly larger than an unfortified suburb of Rome or Constantinople in the Merovingian period. In these two centuries, a close topographical and symbolic connection of residence, royal burial and veneration of saints emerged, which is constitutive for the dynamic development of Paris throughout the Middle Ages…
Susanne Rau, Martin Christ and Sara Keller are convening a panel at this year’s Historikertag which will take place from 19 – 22 September 2023 in Leipzig. The speakers include current and former fellows of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group as well as established reseachers in the field of urban history.
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…
Buildings embody people and ideas: what if this common metaphor were more than a rhetorical device? The author discusses the thesis that architecture can be intentionally designed to create a resonance between a built space and a living being…
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…
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…
In their new book, Fafinski and Riemenschneider reevaluate the relationship between monasticism and the city in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the period 400 to 700 in both post-Roman West and the eastern Mediterranean, putting both of those areas in conversation.
Historian and building archaeologist Sara Keller currently conducts a research project on Water and Water places in urban South Asia in the framework of the KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (FOR 2779). In this regard, she is particularly looking at gardens and green landscapes as spaces of urbanity…
Our new postdoctoral fellow Mateusz Fafinski takes a look at the newly renovated Musée de Cluny. Its a success in many ways: The objects have gained a chronological context while still being roughly grouped by their medium. Through the clever use of the architectural fabric the museum itself is a critical commentary on what is ‘medieval’ and what are the Middle Ages.
The exhibition “Pompeii and Herculaneum – Living and dying under the volcano” at the smac State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz, running from 11 November 2022to 12 March 2023, shows the everyday life of rich local inhabitants in the antique Roman cities Pompeii and Herculaneum. The exhibition shows what their lives were like before the tragic catastrophe, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, urban life was preserved under the ashes. As a result, we can still see how the inhabitants lived and which urban structures shaped their daily life.
How has an ‘urban way of life’ influenced the genesis of different religious and confessional groups? This June, UrbRel postdoc Martin Christ is convening a workshop setting out from this question. The working hypothesis of the workshop is that by considering the mutual formation of religion and urbanity, we can also gain new insights into the phenomenon of religious group formation(s) and find new ways to understand how, when and why, groups formed. The workshop will take place in June in Erfurt.
The dead were always closely tied to religion and urbanity. Members and fellows belonging to the KFG have undertaken a range of project discussing death in cities, ranging from antiquity to the present and including cities, such as Rome, London, Munich and Córdoba…
Our 2022 annual conference was planned as an interdisciplinary event of with innovative format including three parts: a theoretical part on conceptual tools widely used by the KFG, a World Café and lightening talks. It took place in Ettersburg castle (Weimar) and continued on the results of two summer workshops. The conference looked at the concept of urbanity and its possible variations. How do we live (together) in dense urban spaces? How has urbanity been defined so far, how can we contribute to better grasp and describe it?
The basic theological idea of the Christian Christmas is the incarnation of God, the “birthday of the Lord”, as it has been called since the fourth century AD, natalis domini. What the Latin churches celebrate on 25 December, the Eastern churches associate with 6 January, Epiphany, the “Epiphany of the Lord”. You have to delve deep into the philosophy and mythology…