Events

Colloquium with Elisabeth Marx

Junior Researcher Elisabeth Marx will give a presentation on her research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Todd Weir

Our Senior Research Fellow Todd Weir will give a presentation on his research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Furkan Dilben

Guest Researcher Furkan Dilben will give a presentation titled From Tawafuq to Coincidence, Renunciation of Five Daily Prayers: Experiences of Abandoning Religion and Secularization Processes of Religious Men [in Turkey].

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Monika Wohlrab-Sahr

Our director Monika Wohlrab-Sahr will give a presentation on "Relocating Religious Authority".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop: 'Traditionism’ and Multifaceted Responses to Secularization amongst Mizrahim in Israel

Convenor: Yemima Hadad
The Sephardi encounter with modernity shows a counterexample to the Ashkenazi and European experience of secularization. The Mizrahi encounter with modernity offers a case study for thinking of secularization in Israel and beyond. This workshop explores the religious and secular aspects of what we view as Mizrahi renaissance in the context of intra-Jewish power struggles and political debates in Israel.

Workshop: Intersections of Youth, Gender, and Religion under Digital Media in the MENA Region

Convenor: Ülker Sözen
Youth and gender are particular areas of interest within digital religion studies considering a variety of circumstances. Younger generations use online technologies more intensely to interpret and interact with the social world while, correspondingly, social media platforms become the prominent ground for the production and popularization of youth cultures. In this respect, digital media is a consequential site to observe the contemporary strategies of religious authorities for reaching out to the youth along with how the youth engages with religious discourses and form religious identities. With respect to gender, on the one hand, digital media facilitates discourses, practices, and opportunities that can challenge hegemonic and traditional gender roles that are tied to religious traditions, as well as bringing in alternative religious identities that can incorporate gendered forms of rights and visibility politics. Yet, on the other hand, digital media also provides a pivotal environment for the circulation of anti-gender ideology, which draws from religious fundamentalisms along with other forms of far-right politics.

Please click "more" to view the complete programme and abstracts.

Colloquium with Marcella Araujo and Rodrigo Toniol

Our guests Marcella Araujo and Rodrigo Toniol will give a presentation on their recent publication on "Material religion, colonial heritage, and building modernity in Brazil."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Tariq Modood

Our colleague Tariq Modood will present his latest book on "The Governance of Religious Diversity."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Grassroots Movements, Beyond Dichotomies"

The workshop aims to exchange views on patterns of interpretation and explanation of country-specific experiences, how to understand grassroots democratic movements and revolutions in the region, and their role in shaping the future of the Middle East.

Colloquium with Ninja Bumann

Our Junior Research Fellow Ninja Bumann will give a presentation on her research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Daniel Weidner

Our guest Daniel Weidner from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg will give a presentation on his research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Anuj Bhuwania

Our Senior Research Fellow Anuj Bhuwania will give a presentation on his research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Nurit Stadler

Our Senior Research Fellow Nurit Stadler will give a presentation on her research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Family and Religion/Secularity in Turkey and Germany"

Against the background of public and political discourses and the policies that they produced, the first aim of our workshop is to investigate empirical data on how family is imagined and experienced by individuals and families within the fabrics of everyday life – with particular attention to the role of religion in the imaginations and experiences related to “family”. This includes the question of how questions of religion/piety intersect with sexuality, gender, class, ethnicity, and age. Through the lens of “family”, we would like to explore this tension between public discourses and policies and everyday life experiences with regard to religion and secularity.

The second aim of the workshop is to compare the sociological data from Turkey on imaginations and experiences with regard to family and religion with data from research on family in Germany.

Colloquium with Jason Josephson Storm

Our Senior Research Fellow Jason Josephson Storm will give a presentation on "The Genealogy of Genealogy."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Wolfgang Höpken

Our Permanent Senior Research Fellow Wolfgang Höpken will give a presentation on his research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Büşra Kırkpınar

Guest Researcher Büşra Kırkpınar will give a presentation on "Ideological Distance or Public Interaction:
Non-Normative Postsecularity of Individual Worldviews in Contemporary Turkey."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Lydia Ginzburg

Our Associate Researcher Lydia Ginzburg will give a presentation on "Wisdom, Faith and Philosophical practice: Exploring the Framework of Multiple Secularities."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with David Koussens

Our Senior Research Fellow David Koussens will give a presentation on "Secularism(s) in Contemporary France (1989-2021)."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Religion and Secularity in the Balkans – Past and Contemporary Case-Studies and Trends"

The changes in the religious field in the Balkan societies over the last 30 years have been as dynamic and ambivalent as the transformation in the political system, in the economy and the social and everyday- life. We have witnessed and are still witnessing a readjustment between the religious and secular, whose results and forthcoming directions are far from being clear. We are faced with contradictory tendencies and phenomena, which are hard to subdue to general interpretations and conclusions. Picking up individual case studies from various Balkan countries and bringing together representatives from different disciplines and approaches, the workshop wants to debate the question, how the borderlines between the religious and the secular have been drawn, both in the past and during the more recent decades.

Convenor: Wolfgang Höpken (Leipzig University)

Colloquium with David Lehmann

Our guest speaker David Lehmann, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, Cambridge University, will give a presentation on "The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and the reconfiguration of religion."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Jason Josephson Storm

Our Senior Research Fellow Jason Josephson Storm will give a presentation on "Dark Gods in the Age of Light: The Lightbulb, the Japanese Deification of Thomas Edison, and Other Religions of Science."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with David Jeffery-Schwikkard

David Jeffery-Schwikkard from King's College London will give a presentation on "Secular imaginaries in the African National Congress."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Panel Discussion: Contested Secularities – a Global Scenario

The interest in distinctions and differentiations between religion and the secular is not merely academic. It touches deeply on societal struggles and sometimes even goes along with culture wars. This often concerns the relationship between the state and religion. However, everyday life, the family, education, science, and a variety of cultural spheres can also become battlegrounds. The panel discussion aims to discuss contemporary cases in comparison and relate them to the academic debate, it will be the closing session of our conference Eight Years CASHSS "Multiple Secularities": Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors.

Keynote Lecture: The Normative Status of Secularity and Islamic Genealogies of Worldliness

Reinhard Schulze (Bern University) will open our conference Eight Years CASHSS "Multiple Secularities": Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors with a keynote lecture.

Eight Years CASHSS "Multiple Secularities"
Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors

We want to get together once again with our previous fellows and discuss what has been achieved, to celebrate the encounters made here, and the community that this project has enabled with colleagues worldwide.

Colloquium with Karina Jarzyńska

Karina Jarzyńska from Jagiellonian University, Krakow, will give a presentation on "Translating Gods and Heroes. Culturalisation of the Sacred Text in XXth Century Poland."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Nil Mutluer and Tuğçe Özdemir

Our Associate Member Tuğçe Özdemir and Nil Mutluer, both researchers at the Institute for the Study of Religions at Leipzig University, will give a presentation on their research.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "Thrust into Heaven"

Navigating around stereotypes of Islam and non-Muslim belonging in Pakistan, Thrust into Heaven showcases instances of so-called forced conversion of Hindu girls to Islam. The incidents often follow a sequence: a young Hindu woman disappears and resurfaces again as a married and newly converted Muslim. Some of these conversions are utilized to conceal criminal acts including kidnapping, human trafficking, and rape. Others are examples of ways in which young women navigate through Pakistan’s rigid patriarchal society. The film aims to give room to the various interpretations and ambiguities that emerge around the alleged forced conversion of Hindu women to Islam in Pakistan.

Colloquium with Menachem Klein

Our Guest Menachem Klein from Bar-Ilan University will give a presentation on "New Judaism".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Ülker Sözen

Our Associate Member Ülker Sözen will give a presentation on her research project "Youth, Religion, and Secularism in the Digital Landscape: Polarization and Transformation in Contemporary Turkey".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Seminar with Malachi Hacohen

Malachi Hacohen from Duke University, current Leibniz Professor at Leipzig University, will give a presentation on "Religion and Crisis: Ḥurban in Jewish History"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "König hört auf"

The long-time youth pastor Lothar König from Jena does not fit into any system. In the GDR he was shadowed by the Stasi, after reunification he was tirelessly active in the fight against right-wing radicalism, often in the front row. The cinematic portrait shot by his son Tilman König, is nevertheless not a glorifying homage, but a critical tribute to a feisty character who has to reinvent himself with retirement. A documentary about the question of what it means to act and live politically across generations.

Colloquium with Jelle Creemers

Colloquium with Jelle Creemers from ETF Leuven.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Renny Thomas

Renny Thomas from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) will give a presentation on "Culture, ‘Cultural’, and Religious: An Anthropology of Science and Religion in India."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Farhat Hasan

Our Senior Research Fellow Farhat Hasan will give a presentation on "'Dialogic Spaces, Reforms and Secularities in Early Modern South Asia."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Menachem Lorberbaum

Our Senior Research Fellow Menachem Lorberbaum will give a presentation on his research project "Imaging Sovereignty in the 17th Century".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Material Secularities"

In the last decades, questions of the material, affective and corporeal aspects of religion have gained a central place within cultural theory. While the “material turn” generated numerous studies and established sub-fields within anthropology, sociology, and the study of religion, there are still few scholars who explore secularity from a materialist and affective perspective. With an interdisciplinary approach, this workshop, tentatively titled “material secularities”, attempts to examine a range of value-laden (and often contested) material-corporeal expressions of secularity.

Convenors: Magnus Echtler (Leipzig University), Birgit Meyer (Utrecht University) and Nur Yasemin Ural (Leipzig University)

Colloquium with Augustine Agwuele

Our Senior Research Fellow Augustine Agwuele will give a presentation on his research project "Religionization and Secularization of communicative gestures among Yoruba people".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

International Workshop "Muslim Minorities and Questions of Secularity in China and Beyond"

This interdisciplinary workshop investigates the role of secularity – that is, conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations between “religion” and its others – in the formation and normalization of Muslim minorities, with a focus on China.

Convenors: Yee Lak Elliot Lee, Markus Dressler, Hubert Seiwert (all Leipzig University) and James D. Frankel (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Here you find the Workshop Programme.

Colloquium with Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç

Our Senior Research Fellow Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç will give a presentation on her research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Birgit Meyer

Our Senior Research Fellow Birgit Meyer will give a presentation on her research project "Across the Religious-Secular Boundary: Unpacking a Colonial Missionary Collection".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Daniel Witte

Our Senior Research Fellow Daniel Witte will give a presentation on his research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Beyond Secularity – Neutral Zones and How to Find them in Premodern Sources"

This workshop explores the contexts of so called “neutral zones”—that is circumstances, arenas or venues in which people, ideas, practices, or objects were approached without regard to their communal provenance or identity or were at least left untouched by the control of the dominant religious group.

Convenors: Brian Catlos (University of Colorado Boulder), Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (both Leipzig University)

Screening Religion "H2: The Occupation Lab"

H2 is the name given to the eastern part of Hebron - the only Palestinian city with a Jewish settlement in it. Here lies the holy Cave of the Patriarchs, where Jews and Muslims believe their common father, Abraham, is buried.

Through rare archive footage and interviews with Hebron’s military commanders, "H2: The Occupation Lab" tells the story of a place that is both a microcosm of the entire conflict and a test site for the methods of control Israel is implementing throughout the West Bank.

Colloquium with Marian Burchardt

Our Senior Research Fellow Marian Burchardt will give a presentation on his research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Global Crises and Epistemic Fragmentation
Annual Conference 2023 of the Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe)

Highlights:

20 April, 7 – 8 p.m.
Keynote Lecture by Philip Gorski: Disenchantment of the World or Fragmentation of the Sacred? An alternative narrative of Western modernity

21 April, 09:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Panel on Epistemes of Nature, Environment, and the Climate Crisis (Chair: Dagmar Schwerk)

21 April, 1 - 3 p.m.
Panel on Christian Orthodoxy as an Epistemic milieu and a response to the Global Crises

Programme: https://recentglobe.uni-leipzig.de/en/recentglobe-jahrestagung-2023

Colloquium with Christoph Kleine

Our Director Christoph Kleine will give a presentation on his essay “Preparing the Field for Secularity in Medieval Japan”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "Sacred Ground"

The “200 Churches” development project started in 2011 by the Russian Orthodox Church in cooperation with Moscow government provoked several severe conflicts in the city. The film focuses on a story of Torfyanka, a small park where contention between the believers and park defenders has turned into a severe struggle with night watches, physical fights and mutual offence.

Workshop: Who is ‘Us’: Our Culture, our Values, our Heritage and the Reconfiguration of Religion

Building on previous discussions of culturalization by the Multiple Secularities research group, this workshop focuses on the transubstantiation of religion to culture in countries characterized by an historical Christian majority (in some cases a consequence of colonialism) and a contemporary decline in religious affiliation.

Convenors: Lori Beaman (University of Ottawa), Christoph Kleine (Leipzig University), and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig University)

Workshop “Nourishing Values, Feeding Differences: (Religious) Foodways Compared”

This workshop, organized by the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leipzig University, seeks to explore how religion is related to human nutrition in a transregional and cross-cultural historical perspective.

Convenors: Jörg Albrecht, Bernadett Bigalke, Nikolas Broy (all Leipzig University), and Thomas Krutak (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Colloquium with Ahmet Kuru

Our Guest Ahmet T. Kuru from the San Diego State University will give a presentation on his project “Secularism and Islam: A Complex Relationship from History to the Present".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Uta Karstein

Our Senior Research Fellow Uta Karstein will give a presentation on her research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop: "Religion and its History in Turkey: New Approaches, Alternative Perspectives"

This two-day workshop aims to revisit Turkish modernity experience on the centenary of the republic by considering the diverse forms of religiosity and the complexity of religious life in Turkey. With contributions of critical and theoretical religious studies research, we would like to question the binary conceptualisations of religion as well as the strict dichotomy between religion and the secular.

Screening Religion "Midwives"

Hla is a Buddhist and the owner of an improvised clinic in western Myanmar, where the Rohingya - a Muslim minority - are persecuted and denied basic rights. Nyo Nyo is a Muslim woman and trained midwife who works as an assistant and translator at the clinic. Although her family has lived in the region for generations, they are still seen as invaders. Over several years, we observe the two women as they face their daily challenges, but also how they pursue their hopes and dreams in the midst of an environment where chaos and violence are constantly growing.

The film will be followed by a discussion.

Colloquium with Mariachiara Giorda

Our Guest Mariachiara Giorda from Roma Tre University will give a presentation on her research project "Multi-religious spaces and secularity: a historical approach".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Klaus Buchenau

Our Senior Research Fellow Klaus Buchenau will give a presentation on his research project "Russian secularities through the lens of Christian-Muslim relations,16th to 21st centuries".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Liudmila Nikanorova

Our Associate Member Liudmila Nikanorova will give a presentation on her book project “Deshamanizing Siberia”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "Soviet Hippies"

The hippie movement that captivated hundreds of thousands of young people in the West, had a profound impact on the other side of the Iron Curtain. A colorful crowd created their own system, which connected those who believed in peace, love, and freedom for their bodies and souls. There was a widespread desire among the hippies to experience something more than the bleak promise given by the Soviet power regime.

The film will be followed by a discussion.

Colloquium with Asonzeh Ukah

Our Senior Research Fellow Asonzeh Ukah will give a presentation on his research project “Apocalyptic Politics of Prayer camps and the future of the Secular in Africa”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop with Nilüfer Göle

Nilüfer Göle, Professor of Sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris will visit the KFG for an internal workshop. It is planned to discuss Nilüfer's work in a morning session and turn to the programmatic works of the Multiple Secularities group in the afternoon. Readings will be circulated in advance.

Please register for participation via multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Presentation by Brian Catlos

Debates regarding the nature of Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations in the Middle Ages remain largely mired in arguments revolving around the supposed tolerance or intolerance of Islamic and Christian societies in the Middle Ages, based on positions that reflect the predilections and biases of modern scholars as much or more than social, cultural and political realities of the time. Brian Catlos steps back from scholarly assumptions to take a phenomenological approach to intercommunal identity and relations, in a pre-Modern West that stretched from the Indus to the Atlantic and from the Sahel to the Baltic during the “Age of Convergence” (ca 650–1650CE). Catlos shows how the both the formal and informal manifestation of ethno-religious identity and intercommunal relations emerged out of social, economic and political structures that emerged in the broader Mediterranean world at this time – relations that rooted first and foremost in “convenience” rather than ideology or doctrine.

Please register for participation via multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Rajeev Bhargava

Our Senior Research Fellow Rajeev Bhargava will give a presentation on his research project “Pre-modern and Modern Forms of Religious Coexistence in India”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Book Launch with Tani and Rajeev Bhargava

Our Eranos dinner on 8 November will feature a double book presentation by Tani and Rajeev Bhargava. Rajeev will present his latest book “Between Hope and Despair: 100 Ethical Reflections on Contemporary India” and Tani will give us the chance to be among the first to get an impression of her forthcoming first novel “Lost Worlds”, which spans practically the entire 20th century as it traces the fortune and fate of three generations of a North Indian family. Set in relief is the turbulent history of India as it transits from being the jewel in the colonial crown to a fledgling nation.

Please register for participation via multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Religion and Secularism as Problem Space in Postcolonial Occidentalist Discourses within the MENA Region"

The workshop aims to discuss the question of religion and secularity/secularism in the (postcolonial) Occidentalist discourses and their critiques in the MENA region. The question of religion plays a pivotal role in both the Orientalist view of the “Orient” and the Occidentalist view of the “Occident”.

Convenors: Housamedden Darwish, Markus Dreßler (both Leipzig University)

Colloquium with Hugh McLeod

Our Senior Research Fellow Hugh McLeod will give a presentation on his research project “Is Sport a Religion?”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Hansjörg Dilger

Our guest Hansjörg Dilger from Freie Universität Berlin will give a presentation on his research project on "Learning Morality, Inequalities, and Faith: Christian and Muslim Schools in Tanzania".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Sita Steckel

Our Senior Research Fellow Sita Steckel will give a presentation on her research project “Beyond church and state. Re-assessing the emergence of secularities in the European Middle Ages”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Inaugural Lecture by Lori Beaman: “The Transformational Possibilities of Immanence: The Rise of Nonreligion and its Implications for the Climate Crisis”

Our Associate Member Lori Beaman will give her inaugural lecture for her Leibniz Professorship, entitled "The Transformational Possibilities of Immanence: The Rise of Nonreligion and its Implications for the Climate Crisis".
The lecture will take place within the framework of the Leipzig Science Festival "globe 22" and will be held in English with simultaneous German translation.

Colloquium with Dietrich Jung: Boundary Negotiations Between Islam and Economics: Islamic Finance, Halal Products, and the Muslim Entrepreneur

Our Senior Research Fellow Dietrich Jung will give a presentation on his research project "Boundary Negotiations Between Islam and Economics: Islamic Finance, Halal Products, and the Muslim Entrepreneur".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "Kongo"

In his church, Médard the apostle, hunts down the evil eye, which hides in the bodies of the patients he sees. He invokes spells, exorcises, but demons are crafty and the apostle himself is accused of being a sorcerer. It is an arduous task, that of healing souls. It is an arduous task to live in a world where beliefs are shaky.

There will be a discussion following the film.

Colloquium with Sushmita Nath: Book Launch “The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India”

Our Senior Research Fellow Sushmita Nath will give a presentation on her recently published book “The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with Housamedden Darwish

Our Associate Senior Researcher Housamedden Darwish will give a presentation on his research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Presentation and Book Launch: "The Samurai & the Cross: Jesuit Missionaries & Education in Early Modern Japan"

Dr. Murat Antoni John Ucerler, S.J., Director of the Ricci Institute at Boston College, will give a lecture and present his new book.

Free admission. Please email juan.castillo@uni-leipzig.de to register.

International Symposium “Religion, Translation and Transnational Relations: Japan and (Counter-) Reformation Europe“

Co organized by Dr. Katja Triplett (Leipzig University), Dr. Yoshimi Orii (Keiō University, Tokyo) and Dr. Pia Jolliffe (University of Oxford)

Please email juan.castillo@uni-leipzig.de to register for this hybrid event.

Screening Religion: Dealing with Death

The many cultures in Bijlmer, a suburb in the southeast of Amsterdam, all have their own rituals around bidding farewell to the dead. Funeral director Anita is tasked with finding out what the community would want in a new multicultural funeral home, which the funeral organization Yarden hopes to establish there.

The film will be followed by a discussion.

Colloquium with Gökçen Beyinli (Universität Hamburg)

Our guest speaker Gökçen Beyinli will give a presentation on her research project "Revisiting Turkish Modernity through the Category of Superstition".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture: Stefan Binder on ''Atheist Matters: Perceptions of secular difference in South India''

Stefan Binder will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture takes place online and is open to everyone who is interested.

The zoom link can be found here.

Public Lecture: Yee Lak Elliot Lee on ''Mosque Properties and Muslim Graveyards in the Pearl River Delta: Appropriated Physical Space''

Yee Lak Elliot Lee will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Cancelled! Colloquium with Sita Steckel

This session had to be cancelled. We will inform about the new date as soon as possible.

Our Senior Research Fellow Sita Steckel will give a presentation on her research project "Beyond church and state. Re-assessing the emergence of secularities in the European Middle Ages".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "(Im)Materiality of the Secular City: Trials and Tribulations"

The goal of this workshop is to discuss the materiality of the secular and of processes of secularisation in urban spaces. Much ink has been spilled on the ideological dimensions of the modern secular nation state, especially the legal and discursive techniques and realities of managing religious institutions. However, the physical reworking of urban spaces has received less attention even though it is well-acknowledged that grand projects of state-formation go hand in hand with on-the-ground alterations. Whether forced or voluntary, these transformations shape the urban terrain in conformation with visions of a “secular” and/or “modern city.”

Public Lecture: Karsten Lichau on ''Secular Emotions without a Secular Body? What we can learn from the history of the minute’s silence''

Karsten Lichau will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Colloquium on Religious heritage and secularity: The politics of the UNESCO List of Immaterial Cultural Heritage

Martín Andrade-Pérez (University of Groningen, Meertens Institute) and Todd Weir will present a proposal for a future workshop on the way UNESCO world immaterial heritage status is caught up in the global trend towards the use of religious heritage to ground new politics of national identity that may undermine or reframe regimes of secularity.

Comments: Birgit Meyer, Aike Rots and Irene Stengs

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture: Katharina Wilkens on ''Africanisation: An Example of Material Secularity''

Katharina Wilkens will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Colloquium with Farah Hasan

Our guest Farah Hasan from Humboldt University Berlin will give a presentation on her research project “Integrative Secularism: Muslim judges in Germany”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture: Mascha Schulz on ''Performing the Secular: Street Theatre and Songs as ‘Secular Media’ in Bangladesh and West Bengal''

Mascha Schulz will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Colloquium with Giuseppe Tateo

Our Senior Research Fellow Giuseppe Tateo will give a presentation on his research project "Church-building after socialism: an overview".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "Multiple Secularities in Africa and the Diaspora"

Workshop at the Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, Leipzig University, in conjunction with the working group “Africa” of the German Association for the Study of Religion (DVRW)

Convenors: Marian Burchardt, Magnus Echtler, and Katharina Wilkens (all Leipzig University)

Public Lecture: Nur Yasemin Ural on ''Affect Theory and Materiality of Emotions: Secular Affects after Charlie Hebdo''

Nur Yasemin Ural will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Screening Religion: ''Outback Rabbis''

'Outback Rabbis' is a story of a unique group of people with a distinct set of beliefs, willing to go to the extremes to fulfill their religious duties. With a quirky musical score reflecting the synthesis of Jewish and Australian cultures, it takes us into the remotest corners of Australia and the hidden world of the Australian Jewish community of the bush.

There will be a discussion following the film

Colloquium with Monika Wohlrab-Sahr und Christoph Kleine

Based on two recent contributions by our Directors Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr on “Historicizing Secularity” and “Comparative Secularities”, we will discuss the developments that the concept of multiple secularities has undergone since the beginning of our project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture: Sana Chavoshian on ''Micro-relics: Dust and the Multiple Returns of the Past in the Landscapes of War''

Sana Chavoshian will give a lecture as part of the seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Cancelled - Public Lecture: Thomas Schmidt-Lux on ''Is There a Secularist Architecture, and How Does It Look? Field Notes from Turkey and the GDR''

Instead of Thomas Schmidt-Lux's lecture, Magnus Echtler will continue the series with an extension of last week's topic: ''Gendered Bodies in Mountain Movies''. The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Colloquium 4 May 2022 with Wolfgang Knöbl

Sociologist Wolfgang Knöbl will present his new and recently published book "Die Soziologie vor der Geschichte" ("Sociology before History"). Presentation and discussion will be in English.
Discussants:
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
Sita Steckel

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture: Magnus Echtler on "Gendered Bodies in Mountain Movies"

Magnus Echtler will give a lecture as part of his seminar "Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives". The lecture is open to everyone who is interested.
If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers at magnus.echtler[at]uni-leipzig.de.

The zoom link can be found here.

Colloquium 6 April 2022 with Todd H. Weir

Our Senior Research Fellow Todd H. Weir will give a presentation on his book project "Red secularism between secularization narratives and secular studies. Germany's socialist-secularist subculture prior to 1933".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion "Between God and I"

Our Screening Religion film series starts again at the Cinémathèque Leipzig at naTo:
“Between God and I” tells the story of Karen, a Muslim independent young woman who advocates for Sharia on the diverse Ilha de Moçambique but is filled with doubts and contradictions about her identity and the community she lives in.

The film will be shown in Portuguese and Macua with English subs. After the film there will be a discussion.

Colloquium 23 February 2022 with Ebrahim Towfigh

Our Senior Research Fellow Ebrahim Towfigh will give a presentation on his current research project (in German).

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 16 February 2022 with Tom White

Our Senior Research Fellow Tom White will give a presentation on his research project "Pacific Secularities: Religion, Race and Fiji’s Secular State".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 9 February 2022 with Peter Kneitz

Our Senior Research Fellow Peter Kneitz will give a presentation on his research project "Negotiating the Boundaries of the Secular State Project on Madagascar: The Trend towards Institutionalization and Heritagization of fihavanana gasy (Malagasy solidarity) since Independence".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Online Lecture 27 January 2022
Asia Illustrata: The Religions of Asia in Dutch Book Illustrations of the Early Modern Period.

The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, was one of the most important centres of book production in Europe from the second half of the 17th century onward. Publications on various regions and countries of Asia in the form of lavishly designed volumes enjoyed great popularity among the readership. The number and quality of the illustrations contributed decisively to the success of these publications.

Colloquium 26 January 2022 with Katharina Wilkens

Our Senior Research Fellow Katharina Wilkens will give a presentation on her research project "Ancestor Spirits in Secular Society – Negotiating Agency, Space and Heritage in Africa and Beyond".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 19 January 2022 with Dietrich Jung

Our Senior Research Fellow Dietrich Jung will give a presentation on his research project "Islamic Modernities in World Society".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 15 December 2021 with Mariam Goshadze

Our Senior Research Fellow Mariam Goshadze will give a presentation on her research project "The Noise Silence Makes. The Ghanaian State Negotiates Ritual Ban on Noise Making in Accra".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop "The Relationship between State and Religion in the Arab and Islamicate Contexts. Civil State, Secular State, Religious/Islamic State"

The workshop aims at understanding the concepts of ‘civil state’, ‘secular state’ and ‘religious/Islamic state’ and their relation to (the concept/ideal of) democracy in Arab and Islamicate contexts. It starts from a political and philosophical perspective and addresses from there normative and descriptive questions concerning the actual and/or potential forms of the relationship between (democratic) state and/or politics and religion.

Colloquium 01 December 2021 with Ina Merdjanova

Our Senior Research Fellow Ina Merdjanova will give a presentation on her research project "Neo-Secularisation, the Orthodox Church and the Rise of Anti-Gender Politics in Bulgaria".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 24 November 2021 with Thomas Schmidt-Lux

Our Senior Research Fellow Thomas Schmidt-Lux will give a presentation on his research project "Secularity and secularization in the medium of architecture. Studies on Turkey, India and the Soviet Union".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop: Religion as an Object of Historical and Social Scientific Study: Global Perspectives

The workshop will bring together case studies and theoretical reflections on the study of religion as an object of historical and social scientific inquiry in different academic contexts in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. We are especially interested in the global presence and characteristics of religion as an object of study in the most pertinent academic disciplines: History of Religion; Comparative Religious Studies; Sociology; Anthropology and Political Science (excluding Theology and Philosophy). Central questions concern the place, status and history of research on religion in these disciplines.

Workshop: Enshrining the Past: Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age

As the intensity of the politics around cultural identity is growing across the world, the notion of heritage-making, or “heritagization”, has acquired new political urgency. At the same time, these politics have animated far-flung controversies over the religious and secular sources of belonging along with the values of ethnic, religious and racial majorities, minorities and the states that are supposed to represent them. This raises an intriguing set of questions: Under what conditions and with what consequences are certain religious artefacts, rituals and worldviews framed as heritage? Whose religious heritage is considered worthy to be selected, canonized and ennobled as elementary for nations’ collective memory? Who is systematically excluded and left to oblivion in the politics of religious and secular heritage? Which social groups are central to these processes?

Colloquium 20 October 2021 with Silke Steets

Our Senior Research Fellow Silke Steets will give a presentation on her research project "The Structure of Cognitive Minorities: Evangelicals in Leipzig and Unitarians in Dallas".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 06 October 2021: Book launch with Marian Burchardt

Our Associate Member Marian Burchardt will present his new monograph on Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West and we will discuss the relevance of his theses on these topics for the concept of Multiple Secularities and for a globally comparative Sociology.

Discussants:
Dietrich Jung
Hubert Knoblauch
Hubert Seiwert

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 29 September 2021 with Dietrich Jung

Our Senior Research Fellow Dietrich Jung will give a presentation on his research project "Islamic Modernities in World Society".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 22 September 2021 with Bernd-Christian Otto

Our Senior Research Fellow Bernd-Christian Otto will give a presentation on his research project "Psychologisation and Resacralisation Strategies in Western 'Magic(k)' from the 19th to the 21st century".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 08 September 2021 with Elisabeth Marx

Our Junior Researcher Elisabeth Marx will give a presentation on her research project "Notions of the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Holy Rights"

Safia, a deeply religious Muslim woman from Bhopal in central India, is convinced that the conservative interpretation of Sharia law by male jurists and judges restrains Muslim women from social equality and justice.

So she joins a programme that trains women to become Qazis – Muslim clerics who interpret Muslim law and are traditionally male. Other women join Safia in fighting against the arbitrary nature of triple talaq, the immediate divorce declared unilaterally by the man.

After the film there will be a discussion with Professor Anindita Chakrabarti (IIT Kanpur, India).

Colloquium 28 July 2021 with Housamedden Darwish

Our Senior Research Fellow Housamedden Darwish will give a presentation on his research project: „(Mis)Understanding of Secularity/Secularism in the Arab and Islamicate World".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion Special Edition: "Border Crossing Solidarities"

"The Heart of Jenin"
This documentary tells the story of the Palestinian Ismael Khatib. who lives with his family in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. In 2005, his son Ahmed is fatally shot in the head by bullets from Israeli soldiers while playing with friends. Ismael donates his son's organs to Israeli children, saving their lives. Two years later, he embarks on a journey across Israel to visit these children.

"After the Silence"
The documentary is Israeli Yaël Chernobroda's direct response to "The Heart of Jenin".
We will show the film together with "The Heart of Jenin" as part of the "GLOBE21" science festival. After the film there will be a discussion.

Colloquium 07 July 2021 with Christiane Frey and David Martyn

We have the pleasure to (virtually) welcome two guests: Christiane Frey (Alexander von Humboldt-Fellow at HU Berlin), and David Martyn (Professor for German and Russian Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota). They will give a talk entitled “Is Secularism Christianity? Recent Debates on Secularization in Historical Perspective”. In doing so, they will also present their 2020 published edited volume “Säkularisierung: Grundlagentexte zur Theoriegeschichte (“Secularisation: Fundamental Texts on the History its Theory”) and its theoretical conception.

The colloquium will take place as a hybrid event. If you would like to attend in person, please register via e-mail (multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de). The number of physically present participants is limited to 10 people.

Colloquium 30 June 2021 with Timo Duile

Our guest Timo Duile will give a presentation on his research project "Atheism in Indonesia. Ways of Life of non-religious individuals in the religious harmony state".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 16 June 2021 with François Gauthier

Our guest François Gauthier will give a presentation on his research project "Nation-State to Global-Market: An Alternative for the Sociology of Religion" as well as a chapter on "The marketisation of religion" from his book "Religion, Modernity, Globalisation. Nation-State to Market".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 09 June 2021 with Giuseppe Tateo

Our Senior Research Fellow Giuseppe Tateo will give a presentation on his research project "Church-building after socialism: an overview".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Priests" directed by Chris Wright and Stefan Kolbe

What happens when two atheist filmmakers gain access to a preacher‘s seminary?
For one year, Wright & Kolbe accompany a group of young men and women in the final phase of their parish training in Wittenberg, the town of Luther. While at the beginning the main focus is on learning the religious and liturgical ”craft“, in the course of time both protagonists and filmmakers are confronted with very fundamental human questions. Boundaries become blurred – between belief and unbelief, comfort and despair, truth and madness. An open, intimate dialogue emerges about fundamental needs for love, security and meaning.

There will be a discussion following the film.

Workshop: Differentiation Theory and the Sociology of Religion and Secularity.
Part II: Boundaries of Religion: Demarcations and Negotiations

The second workshop on the usability of differentiation theory for research on secularity turns to the meso and micro level of social differentiations and conceptual distinctions in relation to ‘religion’. It explores concrete empirical and historical cases that are instructive for the demarcation and negotiation of boundaries between ‘religion’ and other social spheres and practices.
The workshop aims at a comparative perspective by bringing different regional and historical constellations of religion and its respective others together.

Colloquium 02 June 2021 with Paul Landau

Our Senior Research Fellow Paul Landau will give a presentation on his research project "The African Sacred in the Secularity of World Anti-Apartheid".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 19 May 2021 with Saïd Arjomand

Our Senior Research Fellow Saïd Arjomand will give a presentation on his research project "Multiple secularities and patterns of state secularisation and oppositional contestation in Iran, Egypt and Tunisia".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 12 May 2021 with Markus Dreßler, Aydın Özipek and Tuğçe Özdemir

Our Associate Members Markus Dreßler, Aydın Özipek and Tuğçe Özdemir will present the joint research projekt "Contested Pieties and Secularities: Family and Youth Politics in post-Kemalist 'New Turkey'".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Lourdes" directed by Jessica Hausner

Christine, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is paralysed and the doctors see no chance of a cure. Hoping for relief, she travels to the Catholic place of pilgrimage Lourdes. Miraculously, her condition improves and she is finally able to walk again.

The film will be followed by a discussion with scholar of religion Bernadett Bigalke.

Colloquium 05 May 2021 with Bernd-Christian Otto

Our Senior Research Fellow Bernd-Christian Otto will give a presentation on his research project "Psychologisation and Resacralisation Strategies in Western 'Magic(k)' from the 19th to the 21st century".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 21 April 2021 with Katharina Wilkens

Our Senior Research Fellow Katharina Wilkens will give a presentation on her research project "Ancestor Spirits in Secular Society – Negotiating Agency, Space and Heritage in Africa and Beyond".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium 14 April 2021 with Sebastian Rimestadt

Our Senior Research Fellow Sebastian Rimestadt will give a presentation on his research project "Russian Orthodox Concepts of Secularity".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Wound | Inxeba" directed by John Trengove

Eastern Cape in South Africa. Xolani, a quiet factory worker, travels to an isolated camp in the mountains to participate as a mentor in an ancient Xhosa circumcision ritual. While there, he secretly reunites with his old friend and lover Vija, a married man he sees only once a year, on the sidelines of the ritual. When their secret is discovered, Xolani is faced with a momentous decision.

As in his award-winning short film "The Goat" (2014), director John Trengove here again devotes himself to the Ukwaluka circumcision rite of his South African homeland. In his feature film debut "The Wound", he embeds the story of a gay love affair in it and thus breaks two taboos at once: To this day, neither Ukwaluka nor homosexuality is openly spoken about in large parts of South African society.

The film will be followed by a discussion with ethnologist and Africanist Magnus Echtler.

Colloquium 07 April 2021 with Peter Kneitz

Our Senior Research Fellow Peter Kneitz will give a presentation on his research project "From the Dance of the Rigids (Antananarivo, 1863) to the Storm on the Capitol (Washington D.C., 2021): Some ideas on Secularization gasy, and Secularity"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Light in her Eyes" directed by Julia Meltzer, Laura Nix

Houda al-Habash is a conservative Muslim preacher. Already at the age of 17 she founded a Qur' an school in Damascus exclusively for young girls. Every summer, her female students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam, in addition to their secular schooling. This puts Houda and her students in conflict with traditional attitudes, which see religious education and prayer in the mosque as a male privilege. Using Qur’ anic teachings, Houda encourages her students to pursue higher education, jobs and public lives, while remaining committed to an interpretation of Islam prioritising women’s role as wives and mothers. The film was shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted in 2011.


The film will be shown in Arabic (with English subtitles), followed by a Q&A with scholar of religion Mohammad Magout from Leipzig University.

Online-Workshop "Aesthetics of Atheism"

We would like to draw your attention to a workshop hosted by our dear colleagues Horst Junginger and Katharina Neef from the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leipzig University in cooperation with the KFG: The two-day event entitled "Aesthetics of Atheism" focuses on the atheist imagination in socialist states of the 20th century, that to a great extent relied on orthodox Christianity as its negative counter model. Under the heading of "Atheist mindscapes: visualizations of religion and atheism in the museum", our Senior Research Fellow Edith Franke will give a presentation on "Construction and deconstruction of religion in museums".

Registration for the workshop is requested via e-mail on atheist.aesthetics@uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium with 24 Feburary 2021 with Yee Lak Elliot Lee

Our Junior Research Fellow Yee Lak Elliot Lee will give a presentation on his research project "Constructing Socialist Muslim Subjectivities in China: Normative Discourses in China Muslims, 1957-1960".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture and Discussion with Donovan Schaefer (University of Pennsylvania) on "Feeling Faithless: Making the Affective Turn in Secularism Studies"

This talk explores the ways that the category of the secular can be understood from the perspective of affect. Examining the history of the Sheldonian Theatre at the University of Oxford, this talk suggests not only that what Talal Asad calls "formations of the secular" are felt, but that starting with affect allows us to reframe and revisit the secular/religious binary in productive ways.

Please register at multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Road to Mecca – The Journey of Muhammad Asad" directed by Georg Misch

‘The Road to Mecca’ follows the life path of Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad from the fringes of the former Danube Monarchy to Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and New York. Asad, who became an important cultural mediator and pioneer of a dialogue between Islam and the West, visits places where he has spent time in his life. At the same time, a multi-layered picture of Islam unfolds. At the stops of his journey, Asad’s reflections are juxtaposed with contemporary problems between Orient and Occident.


The film will be shown in the original languages (Arabic and others) with German and English subtitles, followed by a discussion.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Haraldur Hreinsson will give a presentation on his research project “The Secularisation of a Book Nation".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Mariam Goshadze will give a presentation on her research project “Sacred Acoustic Inspectors: Ghanaian State and Noise-Abatement during the Hɔmɔwɔ Festival".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Bruder Jakob" directed by Elí Roland Sachs

The award-winning documentary tells the story of a young man in search of a religion that gives his life meaning. At the age of 23, Jakob turns to Islam and, increasingly radicalised, comes into conflict with friends and family. Elí Roland Sachs documents in observations and conversations how his brother Jakob and his religious views change over time.


The film will be shown in German (with English subtitles) and be followed by a Q&A with director Elí Roland Sachs.

Colloquium

Our Research Fellow Ina Merdjanova will give a presentation on her research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Junior Researcher Johannes Duschka will give a presentation on his research project “The Formation of a Postcolonial Theory of Religion and the Secular. The Works of Talal Asad".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Roberto Blancarte will give a presentation on his research project “Populism, Religion, and Secularity in a Comparative Perspective. Latin America and Europe".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Emperor Haile Selassie I. His burial and the Rastafarians in Shashamane" directed by Verena Böll, Georg Haneke, Günther Schlee, Ambaye Ogato, Robert Dobslaw

The two-part documentary of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle deals with the burial of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassi I and its background. Haile Selassi I is still worshipped by the Rastafarians as a god and messiah, but very few of them took part in his solemn funeral, a gigantic ceremony in Addis Ababa in 2000.

The film will be shown in its original languages with English subtitles. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Verena Böll.

If you wish to attend the screening, please register via multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de by 15 December.

Colloquium

Our Research Fellow Jens Herzer will give a presentation on his research project "Christian ethos and secular religion. The encounter of early Christianity with Epicurean ethics".


If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Paul Landau will give a presentation on his research project “World Anti-Apartheid Mobilization and the Two Germany’s: a Single ‘Sacred Secularity’?”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Virgin Tales" directed by Mirjam von Arx

Evangelical Christians proclaim the second sexual revolution: Chastity as a counter-movement to the “attitude” of modern sexual morality. In the United States, for example, one in eight girls already vows to enter into marriage immaculately. The seven children of the Wilson family, founders of the so-called “Virgin Balls”, go even one step further in their quest for purity of body and mind: Even their first kiss will be at the wedding altar.


The film will be shown in English with German subtitles followed by a Q&A.

Colloquium

Our Senior Researcher Florian Zemmin will present his research project on "Arabic Sociologies of Religion".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Junior Researcher Sana Chavoshian will present her research project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop: Differentiation Theory and the Sociology of Religion and Secularity

The workshop is intended to discuss—in theoretical terms, but also based on historical and contemporary empirical examples, as well as in a global perspective—the merits and limits of differentiation theory for analysis in the realm of the sociology of religion and secularity. Thus, we have invited scholars that have contributed to the discussion on differentiation theory in general, and on secularisation as well as on the religious-secular divide in specific, from different theoretical positions and with reference to different world regions.

Colloquium

Sebastian Rimestad, Senior Research Fellow from Erfurt University, will present his research project "Russian Orthodox Concepts of Secularity".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Der große Navigator – Gott ist auch nur ein Mensch" directed by Sigrun Köhler, Wiltrud Baier

The Swabian missionary Jakob Walter converted the “cannibals” in Papua New Guinea for 22 years. Now he is sent on a mission to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. There he meets people who have lost all connection to ‘religion’ or who never knew it. An incredible film about an impossible mission.


The film will be shown in German with English subtitles and followed by a Q&A with sociologists Thomas Schmidt-Lux and Uta Karstein from Leipzig University.

Colloquium

Our Associate Member Katja Triplett will present her research project on “German Research Foundation Priority Programme SPP 2130 “Early Modern Translation Cultures (1450–1800)”: Japan’s Translated Religion: Christianity, Transculturality and Translation Cultures in the 16th-17th Century".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Permanent Senior Research Fellow Wolfgang Höpken will give an overview on the current state of research related to secularity in Eastern Europe and Russia..

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Junior Researcher Elisabeth Marx will present her research project on "Notions of the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Researcher Nur Yasemin Ural will present her research project on "Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression – Distinguishing Between Religious and Secular Injury".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Carlos Mora Duro will present his research project on “Desecularisation of the State in Latin America? The Convergence of Politics and Religion in Mexico”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Magnus Echtler will present his research project on “African secularities of culturalisation: the Zulu case”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Roberto Blancarte will present his research project on “Populism, religion, and secularity”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Haraldur Hreinsson will present his research project on “The Secularisation of a Book Nation”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Research Fellow Jennifer Cash will present her research project on “Bread and Wine: Labor, Respect, and Poverty in Moldova ”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Virtual Colloquium

Our Research Fellow Jens Koehrsen will present his research project on “Transnational Negotiations of Secularity: Development Collaborations between Northern Development Agencies and Southern Faith-Based Organisations”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Networking and Mentoring Workshop in the Humanities and Social Sciences for At-Risk Ph.D. students

This workshop is directed at current and prospective Ph.D. students who have experienced difficulties in pursuing or continuing their dissertations due to political reasons and who have therefore left their country of origin, or are considering doing so. The primary purpose of the workshop at Leipzig University is to provide participants with two days of academic normality - a chance to present and discuss their projects among themselves, as well as with local students, and more experienced scholars. The secondary purpose is to create a space for networking and mentorship. A group of senior academics (from the fields of Sociology, Cultural Studies, History, Political Science, Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Gender and Media Studies) will offer participants an opportunity to think about future academic possibilities.

Screening Religion: "Get – Der Fall der Viviane Amsalem" by Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz

The drama tells of the fate of the Israeli Viviane Amsalem and her long, desperate struggle for a divorce from her husband Elisha in the Jewish Orthodox Rabbinical Court.
Although the court can require the husband to consent to the divorce, it only becomes effective if he personally hands over a Gett, a divorce letter issued by the court, to his wife. Elisha refuses the divorce, although Viviane has been living apart from him for years.

The screening will be followed by a discussion.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Hans-Georg Ebert will present his research project on “Religious legal regulations and social challenges facing Islamic countries in land law: the waqf lands in the reform process”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Housamedden Darwish will present his research project on "(Mis)Understanding Thick Normative Concepts. The (In)Compatibility between (Political) Islam and the Secular Paradigm".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: Opening Film of CHAI Film Festival

Secret Screening: In cooperation with the Konfizius-Institut Leipzig, the Opening Film of the Chinese film festival CHAI will be shown.

For the 7th time, the CHAI Film Festival is showing feature and documentary films by international filmmakers. All films have China as their main focus and provide insights into contemporary Chinese society and culture.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav will present her research project on "The Emergence of Indian Secularism, 1885-1950".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Junior Research Fellow Yee Lak Elliot Lee will present his research project on “Islamic(ate) “Culture” (Un-)Differentiated in China? A Prefatory Genealogy of Chinese Sources in the 20th Century and a Proposed Study in Contemporary Pearl River Delta”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Venerable W." by Barbet Schroeder

In recent years, violence against the ethnic Muslim minority of theRohingya has grown steadily and eventually escalated in Myanmar. Villages have been systematically destroyed, houses burned down and people were killed or displaced.
The documentary portrays Wirathu, a Buddhist monk and ideological leader of a radical movement against the Rohingya. The film also deals with the aggressive and violent nationalism in general that has spread in Myanmar.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Jason Josephson-Storm will present his research on “Secular Fugues: Towards a Transnational Genealogy of Secularism”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Children of Vank" by Nezahat Gündogan

The documentary deals with the descendants of the few Armenian survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Dersim (Tunceli) and the 1937-38 Dersim massacre. It accompanies descendants who return to the homeland of their ancestors in an attempt to connect with their lost Armenian identity.
In examining issues of belonging, memory and the long shadow of the genocide that now weighs on many Islamised Armenians in Turkey the documentary draws a line from the survivors to the persecution of the religious minority of the Alevis in Dersim.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the directors.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Mark R. Mullins will present his research project on “Competing notions of religion and secularity in occupied and post-war Japan”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture
İştar Gözaydın on "Academic Freedom? Politics and Human Rights In Turkey"

On Tuesday, 10 December, former Leibniz Professor İştar Gözaydın will give a lecture on „Academic Freedom? Politics and Human Rights In Turkey“. She will talk about political history in Turkey, human rights, and her personal experiences. Gözaydın was appointed as Leibniz Professor in the spring term of 2018 but Turkish authorities denied her to leave the country.

Workshop: Sacred Places

Sacred places around the world play an important role in shaping our understanding of religiosity, society, politics and culture. In the 21st century, sacred places worldwide have gained new attributes, becoming important identity indicators for diasporic communities, and constituting multicultural crossroads in border areas and along the symbolic boundaries between different groups.

The workshop will focus on the ethnic and territorial aspects of religion by studying sacred places that are located on borders between cities, states, and ethnic/religious regions, as well as in conflict zones and disputed territories. We wish to explore how sacred sites are becoming increasingly relevant in dictating, shaping, and negotiating geopolitical zones, ethnic identities, collective memory, and new political attitudes, as well as in reinventing cultural identities. Moreover, we wish to investigate how sacred places are being instrumentalised in relation to political as well as cultural boundaries between communities and borderlands in different places worldwide.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow André Laliberté will give a presentation on his research project “Multiple secularities in Chinese societies: religions in the shaping of welfare regimes".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Amrei Sander will present her research project "Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum of Global Perspectives (SRES2)".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "The Souls of Zen. Buddhism after the Tsunami in Japan" by Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio

The film is a documentary about the responses of Japanese Buddhism to the threefold catastrophe – earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown in the nuclear power plant of Fukushima – in Japan in March 2011. It impressively shows the role played by Japanese Buddhism in caring for the survivors, burying the dead and rebuilding the affected regions and reflects the complex role of Zen Buddhism in what is by definition a secular society characterised by natural disasters, religious pluralism and demographic change.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Gudrun Krämer will present her research project on “Islam, Modernity and secularity reconsidered: The case of Egypt”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Public Lecture
Tariq Modood (University of Bristol) on "Re-thinking Political Secularism: the Multiculturalist Challenge"

Whether the recently settled religious minorities, Muslims in particular, can be accommodated as religious groups in European countries has become a central political question and threatens to create long-term fault lines. I argue that to grasp the nature of the problem we have to see how Muslims have become a target of a cultural racism, Islamophobia. Yet, the problem is not just one of anti-racism but of an understanding of multicultural citizenship, of how minority identities, including those formed by race, ethnicity and religion, can be incorporated into national identities so all can have a sense of belonging together. This means that the tendency amongst some to exclude religious identities from public institutions and the re-making of national identities has to be challenged. I suggest that this can be done in a principled yet pragmatic way by drawing on Western Europe’s moderate political secularism and eschewing forms of secularism that offer religious groups a second-class citizenship.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Mark Teeuwen from Oslo University will give a talk on his current research entitled "Religion in the Edo Period".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Christoph Kleine will present the current state of the Multiple Secularities project.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Workshop with Rajeev Bhargava on “Secularism and Multiple Secularities in India”

Since its foundation as a republic, political secularism was an important element of postcolonial India. How it was to be understood, however, was heavily contested from the very beginning. The issue of minorities, especially the Muslim population who chose to remain in the country after the bloody partition between India and Pakistan, became crucial. This is documented in compromises, especially in the realm of personal law that is at odds with the constitutional aim of establishing a uniform civil code. Moreover, Communal violence, often directed against Muslims, has – in its own way – stressed the significance of minority relations for Indian politics. During the last decades, the political project of secularism was heavily contested in India. In the course of this contestation, an odd ‘alliance’ emerged between critics with a Hindu-nationalist background and postcolonial intellectuals. Both criticized secularism as a Western imposition, and considered it “alien” to the Indian civilization (Ashis Nandy). Whereas one side, referred back to an ancient Indian tradition of inter-religious tolerance, the other side argued against the “pampering of minorities”, especially the Muslims, and tried to foster a nation with essentially Hindu features.
The aim of the workshop is to discuss different aspects of his scholarly work, and relate it to the program of “Multiple Secularities” at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It is especially the link between certain historical features of societies, and their present forms of dealing with the differentiation between religion and other societal spheres, which is of interest to the workshop.

The workshop is open to all interested. Please register by 28 October via email to: multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Jason Josephson-Storm (Williams College, Williamstown) will give a talk on “What is a Theory of ’Secularity’ for? The Implications of Process Social Ontology for Comparative Research.”

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Thyssen-Senior Research Fellow Sushmita Nath (Ashoka University, Sonepat, India) will present her research project “Narratives of Secularity in Modern India: An Intellectual and Social History”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Moschee DE" by Mina Salehpour and Michał Honnens

The film mirrors the partially fierce debates and protests in the run-up to the construction of the mosque for the Ahmadiyya community in Berlin-Heinersfeld in 2008.
Based on interview protocols with opponents and supporters of the mosque, neighbours and community members, the two directors let enter fictitious characters enter into an equally fictitious dialogue: The convert, the politically correct newcomer, the local pastor, the imam and the chairman of a citizens' initiative that wants to prevent the construction. Soon it is no longer just about building the mosque, but about the fundamental question of how we want to live together.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz (Bern University, Switzerland) will give a presentation on her research project "Forms of secularity in Tibetan and Mongolian scholarly circles from the 17th to the 19th century".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion: "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" by Rukminee Guha Thakurta

"Mr & Mrs Iyer" was conceptualised as a love story set amidst violence but ultimately says a lot more. On the whole, the film reflects ace director Aparna Sen's humanism depicted through finely blended emotions.

The entrance is free.

Screening Religion: "Mata tertutup (The Blindfold)" by Garin Nugroho

The film is built around three loosely interwoven stories of young people who fall prey to a banned extremist Islamic sect called Negara Islam Indonesia (NII). The stories attempt to come at the phenomenon from different perspectives of wealth, age and gender, showing that this is a problem that crosses all these primary social distinctions, and hence has a salience for all major social groups.

The entrance is free.

Conference: The “Religious”, the “Civic” and the “Secular”: Methods and Concepts

Conference of the Göttingen ERC Research Project “Private Pieties: Mundane Islam and New Forms of Muslim Religiosity”, in cooperation with the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”.

Terms such as religious/secular, individual/collective, private/public or civic/civility are central to the discussion of processes of religious, social and political change. But how can we define these terms, considering, for instance, the fact that these terms are seen differently in the countries of the larger region? Are all of these terms part of binary constructions or do some of them coexist and complement each other?

The conference aims at bringing together experience from a variety of disciplines as well as a variety of research experience in different local contexts.

Colloquium

Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav (University of Oxford, Faculty of History) will give a presentation on “The Emergence of Secularism in India 1885-1950”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Screening Religion: "Kumaré" by Vikram Gandhi

Sri Kumaré is an enlightened guru from the East who has come to America to spread his teachings. After three months in Phoenix, Kumaré has found a group of devoted students who embrace him as a true spiritual teacher. But beneath his long beard, deep penetrating eyes, and his endless smile, Kumaré has a secret he is about to unveil to his disciples: he is not real.

The entrance is free.

Colloquium

Sven Bretfeld (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will present the preliminary findings of his research project on "Responsible for religion and the world. A genealogy of the secularity discourse in Sri Lanka":

Our common project sets out from the basic assumption that secularity (social process) and secularism (political principle) are not homogeneous concepts denoting the same thing in different social and historical settings. My take on this assumption is that these concepts diverge in shape, emotional impact and socio-political connotations in dependence from local historical resources and experiences: The translocal concepts are thus re-shaped---or hybridized (H. Bhabha)---and develop a specific local logic ("Eigenleben") that can be analyzed by discursive genealogy. In my project I have followed these "flows in time" in a Sri Lankan Buddhist context, tracing how the modern opposition pair "secular/religious" has been shaped by similar pre-modern distinctions. To this end, I have compared selected sources from four historical periods: two "pre-modern" periods in which the English terms were not yet known, and two "modern" periods in which the terms "secular" and "religious" gradually entered the local discourses as foreign loan-words denoting a convergence of "foreign" and "indigenous" knowledge-concepts. The comparison yields three main results:

1.) Secularity in Sri Lanka cannot be understood as a decline of religious belief.

2.) Sri Lanka, like some other previously colonized countries, has developed a type of secularization that is distinct from European and American varieties and serves different purposes.

3.) Pre-modern Buddhist secularization theories survive in modern anti-secularism discourses.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture by Ian Johnson: Religion in China. Back to the Center of Politics and Society

For more than a hundred years, China embarked on a movement of forced secularization, with most religions heavily persecuted or banned. But religion is now back at the center of Chinese society and politics, with the country now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Churches are being demolished, Muslims forced to attend re-education camps, but also of the government promoting Buddhism and folk religion. How to reconcile these contradictory claims? Pulitzer Prize-winner author Ian Johnson has lived for more than 20 years in China, following the country's search for values, faith, and new ways of organizing society.

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer focusing on society, religion, and history. He works out of Beijing, where he also teaches university classes. Johnson has spent nearly twenty years in the greater China region, first as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985, and then in Taipei from 1986 to 1988. He later worked as a newspaper correspondent in China, from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore's The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro economics, China's WTO accession and social issues.

Latest publication: Johnson, Ian. The souls of China: The return of religion after Mao. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017.

More information: http://www.ian-johnson.com/

Public lecture and discussion with Horst Dreier on his book "Staat ohne Gott"

In his book "State without God. Religion in the Secular Modern Age" the constitutional rights expert Horst Dreier argues the following thesis: In modern democracy the state may not identify with any particular religion. Only in a state without God all citizens can live in freedom according to their quite different convictions.
The development of Germany towards a multireligious and multicultural society has created new fields of conflict between followers of different faiths and between them and the authorities. The reflection on the basic structures and questions of the secular state, its program, its profile and its problems seems to Horst Dreier to be necessary therefore.

Horst Dreier is Professor of Philosophy of Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Würzburg.

The lecture will be followed by a public discussion, which will be introduced by a commentary by Rochus Leonhardt, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig University. Both the lecture and the discussion will be held in German.

Workshop: Interrogating Secularity in India and Beyond

Our Senior Research Fellow Anindita Chakrabarti will organise a Workshop on "Religion, Civil Society and Personal (Family) Law Reform in Post-Colonial Nation-States: Interrogating Secularity in India and Beyond". The workshop aims to unpack some of the recent as well as historical dynamics of judicial reform of personal law in India in order to think through how the principle of secularity has been intertwined with the questions of authority, authenticity and governance. We are looking for empirically grounded work that can contribute to a better understanding of the conceptual issues vis-à-vis the shifting contours of the guiding principles of secularity in post-colonial democracies. We also seek papers from other national contexts where similar issues of religious freedom, gender and personal law reforms have undergirded the debate on secularity in contemporary times.

Colloquium

Harald Wiese (Institute for Theoretical Economics at Leipzig University) will give a lecture entitled "From dakṣiṇā to dāna—an Indian secularization process?"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Screening Religion: "REASON. The war between faith and rationality" by Anand Patwardhan

In what is perhaps his most urgent and thorough exploration of Indian society yet, renowned documentarian Anand Patwardhan charts his country’s slide away from secular democracy and toward divisions of power, caste, and religious belief — and the violence that has followed.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A session with the director. The entrance is free.

Public Lecture on the Meaning of Theravāda by Sven Bretfeld

Our Senior Research Fellow Sven Bretfeld will elaborate on the (historical) meaning of Theravāda, putting forward the thesis that this notion harks back to a centuries-old, implicitly polemical ideology of identity building which was unconsciously perpetuated by the academic categorisation of so called "world religions" in the 20th century.

The lecture is organised by the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies of Leipzig University and will be held in German.

Colloquium

Matthew W. King (University of California-Riverside) will present his research project "‘Unbiased Scholars’ and ‘Superficial Intellectuals’: Was there a Public Culture Between Europe and Inner Asia in the Long 19th Century?"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Conference: Critical Potentials of Secularist Practice

In recent years, secularist activism has been generating considerable interest in terms of historical research. Whereas freethought organizations, their protagonists, and their discussions were intensively investigated, there is up to now scarce discussion on concrete attempts to melt secular positions into a certain lifestyle. Therefore, this international conference focusses on the practical level: What did these secularists actually do? What meant living a secular(ist) life? Furthermore, we evaluate the narratives that were used to legitimize these practices. A central point of reference will be their relation to religion, be it in a positive, affirmative way, be it negatively rejective.

The conference will trace these constellations in an international and comparative framework, thereby making apparent differences and similarities of the secularist approaches in the run of the late 19th and 20th century. Our aim is to cast light on the development and critical potentials of the religious and cultural setting that moulded the normality of modern secular lifestyles.

Kick-off new film screening series “Screening Religion” with "Shoot me" by Narges Kalhor

In her award-winning documentary “Shoot Me” (co-directed with Benedikt Schwarzer) from 2014 she portrays the exile Iranian Shahin Najafi. When he published a song named after a Shiite prophet that deals with many of Iran’s political and social problems, he was confronted with death threats. A head money of 100,000 dollars was put on him, since radical Muslims saw in his song a blasphemy to be punished. Therefore, Shahin Najafi had to disappear.

The film will be followed by a Q & A session with the director.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Mirjam Künkler will present her research project on “The educational underpinnings of reformist Islamic thought in post-independence Indonesia”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Madlen Krüger (University of Münster) will present the preliminary results of her research project. The presentation will be entitled "Institutional regulations and moral authority - Claims to protect the Buddha Sāsana.“

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Conference: The Ambivalent Relationship between Politics and Religion: Interpretations and Explanatory Approaches

The relationship between religion and politics is considered ambivalent in modern (secular) societies: On the one hand, religion is often viewed by politics as a potential source of social conflict and thus as a threat to democracy. For political sociology, issues of emergence and management of religious conflicts come to the fore: What influence do religious motives have on political commitment? Under what conditions do religious conflicts lead to violence? How can religious conflicts be dealt with politically? Can religious communities themselves contribute to the solution of conflicts resulting from the pluralism of society?

Religion is by no means perceived as a potential “source of conflict”. It has often made a significant contribution to the legitimation of political orders in history. Bellah (1967) coined the term civil religion. However, it often happens that the widespread – and normatively often “demanded” – separation of the two realms becomes blurred: the sacralisation of central political ideas and institutions such as “nation”, “nature”, “democracy” or “civil society” or “citizen” is a fundamental condition for the emergence of stable institutional orders. The question therefore arises as to what contribution an extended concept of religion and religiosity can make to the understanding of the political in secular societies.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Adrian Hermann, Director of the Department of Religion Studies at the University of Bonn (Germany), will give a presentation on his research project “Relating and Distinguishing Between Religion and Science in Thailand and the Philippines in the 19th and Early 20th Century”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Nadja-Christina Schneider (Humboldt University Berlin) will present her research project “Tea for interreligious harmony? Emerging visual secularities in India”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Gert Pickel (Leipzig University) will present his research project “Secular autocracies, religious democracies?”.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Directors Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr will give a presentation on the current status of the HCAS’ research programme.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Ebrahim Towfigh from the Department of Sociology at Tarbiyat Modares University in Tehran (Iran) and our Senior Researcher Nader Sohrabi will present their research project on Religion, State and Civil Society in early 20th century Iran.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Sven Bretfeld, Senior Research Fellow from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim will present his research project "Responsible for religion and the world. A genealogy of the secularity discourse in Sri Lanka".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Junior Researcher Elisabeth Marx will give a presentation on her PhD project on "Notions of the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Kyuhoon Cho from the "Institute of History and Culture" at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul (South Korea) will present his research project on the "Secular State and the Formation of Religion in a Globalised Korea".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

André Laliberté (Ottawa University) will give a talk on the intercation of religion and the state in the shaping of welfare regimes in Chinese societies. Reading: Laliberté, André. “Religious Philanthropy in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.” Asian Journal of Social Science 43, no. 4 (2015): 435–65. doi:10.1163/15685314-04304006.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Sjak Smulders (Tilburg University) on "Economics behind the Reformation"

Sjak Smulders' main research focus are the conditions for and impact of (sustainable) economic growth. In his lecture he will give a re-interpretation of Max Weber's Protestant-Ethics-thesis and discuss, if people might have opted for Protestantism in order to participate in greater economic freedom.
Currently, Sjak Smulders holds the Leibniz-Professorship at Leipzig University.

Reading: Curuk, Malik; Smulders, Sjak (2016). Malthus Meets Luther: The Economics Behind the German Reformation, CESifo Working Paper, No. 6010, Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/145045

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium with Heiner Roetz (Bochum University): "On modern and secular thought in axial age China"

Public Lecture: Alevi Kurds and the Transformation of Sacred Space in Dersim

Focusing on the Dersim region, this presentation by Philipp Schwartz Fellow Ahmet Kerim Gültekin will examine the transformation processes of practices related to sacred places in Kurdish Alevism. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the lecture will inquire into the religious transformation of the Dersim region and its broader significance for the study of Alevism.

Workshop: Transnational Religious Spaces

The SFB 1199 and the Centre for the Study of Religion will host a workshop on "Transnational Religious Spaces: Religious Organizations and their Interaction in Africa, East Asia and Beyond." The workshop consists of two parts, in order to combine regional expertise on African and East Asian religious organizations on the one hand, with transregional and theoretical approaches on the other hand.

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Ursula Rao (Leipzig University) will present the preliminary findings of her research project on Religious territory and secular terrain in urban India.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Roberto Blancarte (El Colegio de Mexico) will give a talk on "Latin-American secularity (and laicity) and the lessons we can learn from it."

Professor Blancarte will explore Latin American past and present in order to expose some of the lessons we can learn from the global process of secularization, but also in particular from secularization of the State (laicity). The use of these two concepts will help also to explain the paradox of a permanent presence of religions in the political sphere in an increasingly secularized world.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Bjørn Ola Tafjord (University of Tromsø) will give a presenation on "Indigenous Religion as a Method".

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Colloquium in cooperation with the "Law and Culture", which is a cooperation between the Faculty of Law and the Institute for the Study of Culture at Leipzig University on the one hand and the University of Malang and Jakarta in Indonesia on the other hand.

The KFG contribute to this cooperation with a presentation by its Senior Research Fellow Edith Franke (Marburg University) on "Negotiating the boundaries between religion and non-religion in Muslim-dominated Indonesia".

Abstract:
The process of negotiating the boundaries between religions and between religion and non-religion in Muslim-dominated Indonesia is shaped by the diversity of religious practices and denominations (from belonging to an Islamic or Christian community to Hindu-Buddhist orientations and even local mystical traditions) being historically taken for granted – an explicitly non-religious orientation is almost inconceivable. At the same time there are ongoing controversial discourses on the criteria under which a religion can officially be recognized as agama since the founding of the Republic of Indonesia in 1945. Beside the acknowledgement of Islam, Christianity and a short time later also Hinduism and Buddhism in terms of constitutional law, the acceptance of Confucianism took place only in 2006 while the efforts to achieve the acceptance of local mystical traditions like kebatinan or kejawen as agama have not been successful to date. A person without a religious commitment is usually seen as orang belum agama, a person with a preliminary status of literally being “not yet religious”. So what is religion in Indonesia and is there a space for non-religion? I will pay attention to critical issues in public discourses on religion, non-religion, and secularity referring to traditional distinctions of agama and kepercayaan. The analysis will reveal discrepancies between normative categorizations and individual negotiation processes as well as the impact of global discussions on Islamic purification on the one hand and the position of local traditions and secularization of Islam on the other hand. I will try to offer insights into crucial points of contemporary, sometimes heated discussions on religious diversity, religious freedom, the position of local or new religious tradition and last but not least on secularism.

Colloquium

Kyuhoon Cho (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies) on "Secularity and the Formation of Religion in North and South Korea"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Keynote: Early Modern Jesuit Intercultural Encounters and the Globalization of Secularities

José Casanova’s public lecture will be the opening keynote of the conference "Secularities – Patterns of Distinctions, Paths of Differentiation" (04-06 October) of the KFG „Multiple Secularities“.

Conference: Secularities - Patterns of Distinction, Paths of Differentiation

Wherever religion is on the agenda, its boundaries are present as well. Relations as well as separations are at stake, negotiations as well as conflicts arise: people start defining boundaries, making claims and sanctioning the reasonable and unreasonable, the legitimate and illegitimate. We assume that differences in the vehemence and structure of such boundary demarcations can only be explained if the regionally diverging historical experiences are taken into consideration.
Thus, the conference aims to discuss the variety of symbolic and institutional measures that distinguish between the religious and the non-religious (and at the same time relate the two to each other) in modern societies, and find explanations for the multiplicity of “secularities”.

Keynote: José Casanova (Georgetown University, Washington,D.C.)

Colloquium

Our Associate Member Lena Dreier will present her current research project on "Students’ Belief within Islamic Theology. Relationships and Distinctions between Religiosity and Theology in a New Academic Discipline in Germany."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture: Monopolizing Islam: The Diyanet, Secularism and the State in Turkey

Berna Zengin Arslan from Özyeğin University Istanbul will visit the KFG "Multiple Secularities" to give a public guest lecture on "Monopolizing Islam: The Diyanet, Secularism and the State in Turkey".

Rather than being an exceptional institution of the laik system, the Diyanet has been a vital component of the secular state in Turkey, a centralized and powerful institution that to a great extent manages and governs the religious field. The talk will focus on the transformation of the role of the Diyanet, which has expanded from providing religious services and framing ‘a moral perspective for the Turkish society’ to participating in the process of Islamizing everyday life. By 'moving out of the mosque' during the last decade, the Diyanet started engaging in characteristically ‘non-religious activities,’ such as the care services for women, families and elderly, in a way to integrate those fields into the ‘religious’. Furthermore, focusing on the latest cases, such as the closure of Furkan Vakfi and the arrest of Adnan Oktar, the talk will discuss how the governing mentality of the secular state still works under the JDP administration, in homogenizing the field of religion and managing Islamic groups in Turkey. The talk will end with a discussion of whether a new 'hegemonic Islam,' which differs from the moderate Islam of the Kemalist regime, has been produced and established as the state's Islam in Turkey.

Workshop: Formations of Secularity in pre-modern Asian Societies

8th conference of the Working Group History of Religions in Asia (AKAR) within the German Association for the Study of Religions (DVRW) / Workshop of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”

The conference continues the discussion on questions of concepts of religion, semantic or functional equivalents to the ‚modern Western’ notion of religion in Asian societies raised on the 6th AKAR’s conference in 2010 at Leipzig University. This year’s conference follows up with discussions on processes of inner societal differentiations and distinctions, that may allow to qualify certain fields of social action, emic norm systems, knowledge systems, and taxonomies as well as Institutions as ‘religious’ in a meta linguistic sense.

Workshop: Secularities in Japan

It is evident that secularity in Japan is not the same as secularity in the United States, France, or Germany. Based on our assumption that there is not just one form of secularity but a multiplicity of secularities, depending on historical path dependencies, specific epistemes and dispositives, social structures, emic taxonomies, and knowledge regimes, we aim at a reconstruction of the trajectories that prestructured the appropriation of hegemonic Western concepts of secularity in the 19th and 20th centuries. We also want to ask whether, and if so, how these peculiar historical preconditions still have an impact on Japanese discourses on the boundaries between religion and the secular sphere (e.g. recent debates on the status of the Yasukuni shrine and attempts to alter articles 20 and 89 of the constitution).

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Florian Zemmin (University of Bern) will present the preliminary results of his research project "Sociology in the Arabic World – towards a Genealogy of Secularity in Islam."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium with Detlef Pollack (University of Münster)

Detlef Pollack will give a presentation on "Various types of social differentiation: What is peculiar to Latin Christianity in comparison to other religious cultures?"

Detlef Pollack is Professor for Sociology of Religion and spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" at the University of Münster. His main areas of interest are processes of secularisation, religion and modernity, religious change in Western and Eastern Europe and in the U.S. and political culture in Eastern and East-central Europe.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture "The Armenian Massacres of 1909: Prelude to Genocide?"

The KFG's Senior Reseacher Nader Sohrabi​​ will present his current research on the Armenian Massacres of 1909 on 3 July, 6:15 p.m. at Leipzig University's Research Academy​ (Villa Tillmanns, Wächterstraße 30).

Colloquium

Our Senior Research Fellow Christian Mauder (Göttingen University) will give a presentation on his current research project within the KFG "A Sign of God or a Matter of Physics? Cosmology and Cosmography between Revealed Knowledge and Secular Philosophy in Medieval Sunni Islam."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Conference: Critique of Modernity

Ideas travel in time and space. The conference seeks to explore the transnational circulation of counter-enlightenment discourses, moods and motifs as well as those of their intellectual opponents. We will discuss the global phenomenon of anti-modern critique in its specific regional contexts in the Islamicate world, but also its wider entanglements. The cases of Ahmad Fardid and Henry Corbin are revealing examples of such transnational traveling of ideas and traditions.

Critique of “Western” modernity is present outside and inside the West. We aim at discussing the similarities and differences between various types of such critique, including critical theory approaches and post-modern forms of critique.

Public Lecture on "Buchkultur als Mittel der Herrschaftslegitimation"

Our new Senior Research Fellow Christian Mauder will give a guest lecture on "Buchkultur als Mittel der Herrschaftslegitimation: Höfische Manuskriptkulturen unter dem vorletzten Mamelukensultan Qāniṣawh al-Ġaurī (r. 1501-1516)" at the Leipzig Institute of Oriental Studies. The Lecture will be held in German.

Abstract: Warum interessiert sich ein alter ägyptischer Kriegersultan plötzlich für persische Buchillustrationen? Wieso richtet er an seinem Hof eine Werkstatt für Buchmaler ein, und
woher nimmt er die dafür notwendigen Künstler und Handwerker? Und warum lässt er in einer arabischsprachigen Umgebung persische Werke ins Türkische übersetzen? Christian Mauders Vortrag widmet sich diesen und weiteren Fragen, die sich aus der Blüte der Buchkultur Kairos unter dem vorletzten Mamlukensultan Qāniṣawh al-Ġaurī (r. 1501-1516) ergeben, und beantwortet sie vor dem Hintergrund der politischen Situation des Mamlukenreichs am Anbruch des 16. Jahrhunderts.

Colloquium with Elizabeth Kassab (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies)

Our guest Elizabeth Kassab will give a colloquium lecture on "When religion didn’t matter. Fin de siècle debates in Cairo and Damascus on the eve of the 2011 revolutions."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture

The KFG co-organises a public talk together with Kornelia Sammet's project Worldviews of Unemployed People. Zafer Yilmaz will present a lecture on "The Authoritarian-Islamic Populism, Islamisation, and Politics of Welfare in Turkey".

Public Lecture

Armin Nassehi (LMU München): Zwischen Engagement und Distanzierung. Die Soziologie als öffentliche Sprecherposition

Die Soziologie galt in den 1970er Jahren als Leitwissenschaft. Es ist ihr damals gelungen, sogar die öffentliche Sprache zu „versozialwissenschaftlichen“. Das wissenschaftliche Sprechen freilich unterscheidet sich vom medialen, politischen und beratenden Sprechen. In dieser Spannung entdeckt die Soziologie die Unterscheidung von Engagement für Themen und Anliegen auf der einen, und wissenschaftlicher Distanzierung auf der anderen Seite. Der Vortrag wird der Frage nachgehen, wie die Soziologie die Differenz dieser beiden Seiten zu managen versucht und wie sich die Position der Soziologie als öffentlicher Sprecherin seit den 1970er Jahren verändert hat.

Der Vortrag ist öffentlich.

Colloquium

Ursula Rao on "Hindu temples between visual spectacle and haptic architecture“

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr on "Counter-narratives to Disenchantment and Secularization: Implicit Totality behind Critiques of Differentiation"

Whereas concepts of secularization and disenchantment have been central elements of modernization theories for decades, in the meantime they seem to be widely discredited, especially when they are used to make sense of non-European developments. Diagnoses of secularization have been demystified as “myths” of modernity, and concepts as well as institutions of secularism have been discredited as – often violent – Western impositions to the non-Western world. Not only their political imposition, it is argued in these counter-narratives, but also the narratives of secularization and the conceptual divide between the secular and the religious as such, are alien to the worlds to which they have been imposed.

The paper takes a closer look at central strands of this critique, especially with regard to the Islamicate world and to India. The thesis is that parts of this critique implicitly or explicitly employ concepts of wholeness and totality that are juxtaposed to the divisive nature of secularization and secularism. This resonates with early – e.g. Romantic – critiques of secularization in the European history. It leads, it is argued, against the very intentions of the critics, to an “othering” of the non-European world. And it leaves the question for the existence of distinctions and differentiations between the religious and the non-religious in this part of the world chronically unanswered.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Hubert Seiwert on "Ancestor Worship and State Rituals in Contemporary China. Fading Boundaries between Religious and Secular"

The paper argues that the distinction between religious and secular realms of society is not as clear-cut in modern societies as it appears in theories of functional and institutional differentiation. The data used are mainly from China with a short excursion to the United States. The starting point is ancestor worship, which is a central element of traditional Chinese religion. The significance of ancestor worship in Chinese history and culture is briefly explained to illustrate on the one hand its central importance as a ritual practice and on the other hand the ambiguities of interpretation. On this basis, some theoretical considerations about the existence of ancestors are presented. This is followed by a report on contemporary temple festivals focusing on the worship of Fuxi, a mythic figure considered to be the first ancestor of the Chinese people. The next step is the description of official state rituals devoted to the worship of the very same mythological hero in contemporary China. Against this backdrop, the last part of the paper discusses the theoretical questions of classification and distinguishing between the religious and the secular.

Seiwert, Hubert (2016): Ancestor Worship and State Rituals in Contemporary China. Fading Boundaries between Religious and Secular. In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 24 (2), S. 127–152.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Wolfgang Höpken on " 'Negotiating secularity' – discourses on secularism among Bosnian Muslims 1878–2015"

Reading: KARIĆ, ENES. "Islamic Thought in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 20th Century: Debates on Revival and Reform." Islamic Studies 41, no. 3 (2002): 391-444. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837210.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Workshop: Religion and medicine in pre-modern Asian and Islamicate cultures. Distinctions and differentiations in emic discourse and practices from 600 BC to 1600 AD

The workshop will bring together scholars of the history of healing practices and medicine in non-western societies to explore how emic boundaries between religion and medicine were established in different historical non-western contexts. The workshop seeks to explore historical case studies from different regions of Asia and the Islamicate world to compare if and how religious and medical knowledge systems and practices are defined, distinguished and demarcated in emic discourses and practices.

By focusing on emic taxonomies and classifications of concrete case studies, we will probe if and to what extent premodern societies set apart and combined religious and non-religious knowledge systems and practices that are hard to grasp with our etic and modern dichotomical taxonomy of medicine and religion and thus in further consequence spawn terminological conjunctions such as magico-religious medicine, spiritual healing or an immanent-transcendent body frame. These etic labels blur the distinctive practices and discourses in a concrete historical setting and gloss over emic boundary drawings and demarcations that may not primarily be focused on a separation of medicine and religion, but on other social, economic or political realities and challenges.

Conference: Soziologie wiederkehrender Religionen. Originalität und Relevanz der Religionssoziologie von Wolfgang Eßbach

The conference in cooperation with the Sections Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Culture within the German Sociological Association (GSA) deals with Wolfgang Eßbach's Book "Religionssoziologie 1. Glaubenskrieg und Revolution als Wiege neuer Religionen", published in 2014.

Starting from recent (religious) developments Eßbach focuses in this first of two planned volumes the European history of religion, analysing the conditions for religious revival, for the stabilisation of religions and for increasing religious indifference. Furthermore, he seeks to explore the changes of religious belief within religious dynamics.

Colloquium

Florian Zemmin (Bern University) on "Sociology in the Arabic World – towards a Genealogy of Secularity in Islam"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Neguin Yavari (CEU Budapest) on "The Architecture of Institutionalization in Medieval Iran"

Neguin Yavari will present her research project at the KFG on the changing configurations of religion and politics from 1200-1500 in the Islamic east. It stems from her previous work on political thought, and especially on the song and dance between religion and politics in the medieval Islamic world, and its handmaiden the valences of religious terminology in political language.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Ingolf Dalferth (Claremont Graduate University) on "Orientation by Distinctions. Christian faith and the secular world."

The theologian and philosopher of religion Ingolf Dalferth is the current holder of the Leibniz professorship at Leipzig University. In the colloquium we will discuss the translation of the first chapter of his book "Transzendenz und säkulare Welt. Lebensorientierung an letzter Gegenwart".

Reading: Dalferth, Ingolf U (2015). "Orientieren durch Unterscheiden. Christlicher Glaube und säkulare Transzendenz und säkulare Welt. ["Orientation by Distinctions. Christian faith and the secular world."]" In: Ingolf U. Dalferth: Lebensorientierung an letzter Gegenwart. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1-55.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Daniel Kinitz (Leipzig University) on "The Pan-Islamic journal al-Manār (1898–1940) and the question of secularity. A distant and close reading approach"

The journal al-Manār represented one of the most important periodicals within the Islamicate world in the first half of the 20th century. Edited by Muḥammad Rašīd Riḍā (1865–1935), the journal covered the shifts and upheavals within Muslim societies, at the same time publicly constructing the social meaning of the new phenomena.

The presentation will (1) show how some digital humanities methods can be used to approach al-Manār as a text corpus, (2) discuss findings within a statistically significant section of the corpus and (3) give an outlook on how Arabic and Islamic studies as well as research on secularity can make use digital humanity methods in general.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Johannes Quack (Zurich University) on "Classifications of Human Kinds: A Contribution to Debates on Distinctions, Differentiations, and Everyday Life (on the basis of “Dalit”)

In his presentation Johannes Quack will give a
1) A brief discussion of the question of how to conceptualize the impact of colonialism on distinctions, differentiations, and practices related to notions like Hindu, Caste & Dalit;
2) A summary of Ian Hacking’s conceptualizations of looping processes of “human kinds”;
and, based on these two points,
3) A case study how the labels Hindu and Dalit (and Bhangi, a subgroup of Dalits) are appropriated in everyday life.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Mascha Schulz (Zürich University): "'That was a good move’ – Some remarks on the (ir)relevance of political narratives in everyday interactions in Bangladesh."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Philip Clart on "Religious Museums in Taiwan"

Reading: reincarnations of the museum. the museum in an age of religious revivalism (chapter 9, pp. 203-217 in: Mathur, Saloni; Singh, Kavita: No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia. London [u.a.]: Routledge, 2015).

Workshop and Public Keynote: Nationalism and Religion

This workshop is open to all who explore the relation between nationalism and religion in the modern world from the nineteenth century to the present. The workshop aims to transcend the opposition between religion and nationalism and explore their interaction contextually. What are the changing forms of reli-gion and nationalism through time, and under what local or global circum-stances do they become conflicting or mutually reinforcing rubrics for action and identity?

Convenor: Nader Sohrabi

The workshop will be opened by a keynote on "Reluctant Nationalists, Imperial Nation State and Neo-Ottomanism: Turks, Albanians and the Antinomies of the End of Empire" by Nader Sohrabi (14 December, 5 p.m.). Paper presentations will start at 10 a.m. on 15 December.

Colloquium

Mohammad Magout: The Role of the Press in the Evolution of Arab Discourses on Secularity. The Case of al-Jinān (1870-1886)

Mohammad Magout will present his new research project about the role of the Arabic press in Beirut, from its inception in 1850’s until the mid-1880’s, in the development of Arab notions of secularity. The focus will be on al-Jinān; a bi-weekly periodical concerned with politics, society, and education that was published between 1870 and 1886 by Butrus al-Bustani—a pioneer of al-Nahda (“Arab Renaissance”) in the 19th C—and his son Salim. However, other periodical from the same period will be considered, such as al-Bashīr (issued by the Jesuits) and Thamarāt al-Funūn (first Islamic periodical in the Arab world), in order to provide a broad picture of the social and cultural context for the formation of modern Arab discourses on secularity.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture: Islam in the “Age of Confessionalization”

Tijana Krstic (CEU) will talk about " Islam in the “Age of Confessionalization”: Reimagining Community, Piety, Morality and Governance in the Ottoman Empire, 1540s-1720s."

The talk aims to investigate the impact of confessional polarization among Muslims living in the early modern Ottoman Empire (and beyond) on the emergence of new conceptual distinctions in the discourses of piety, morality and governance articulated by Ottoman Muslims between the sixtenth and early eighteenth centuries. At the outset, the talk will discuss the phenomenon of fashioning a Sunni orthodoxy and the accompanying processes of confession (or mezhep) building in the Ottoman Empire, starting in the early sixteenth century. It will then proceed to consider the impact of the discourses of confessional differentiation on the notions and practice of piety, as well as on the relationship among piety, morality, community, and political power. Special attention will be devoted to the evolving notions of the state’s role in regulating piety in light of the ongoing research of a team of scholars working on the OTTOCONFESSION project.

Colloquium

Katja Triplett: Buddhism and Medicine in Japan. A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship

The book surveys textual sources that pertain to ‘medicine’ as a set of ideas produced and maintained as a social and cultural system of knowledge in early and medieval Japanese Buddhism. Terminological problems faced in working on this material such as ‘religious’ or ‘magical healing’ as opposed to ‘secular, scientific and evidence-based medicine’, are assessed. The sources explored in this book treat both ritual and medical knowledge in a combined way: Japanese medical works that are usually thought to be secular such as the court physician’s Ishinpō (948) actually quote numerous Buddhist sources. Buddhist monastics and powerful lay patrons actively engaged in medico-religious knowledge as shown in the case of the materia medica compiled by the Shingon monk Ken’i in the twelfth century. In addition to aristocratic members of the elite, semi-ordained “miracle working” healers seem to have had a significant impact on the production of knowledge, as well. The approach is topical and comprises chapters on treating sight-related diseases, women’s health, plant-based materica medica and medicinal gardens and finally horse medicine to include veterinary knowledge beside ideas and practices of human medicine, botany and pharmacognosy. The book concludes with a reconsideration of basic categories deriving from the “Western” intellectual tradition and suggests focusing more on the syncretistic and plural nature of the Japanese healing system as encountered in the primary sources.

Colloquium

Johannes Quack (Zurich University): Indispensible and inadequate categories: Some basic anthropological considerations on conceptual sieves

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Joint Colloquium

Joint Colloquium with the DAAD-Project "Law and Culture".

Presentation: Aan Eko Widiarto (Universitas Brawijaya, Malang) on "The blasphemy charges against Ahok"

Indonesia is founded on a tradition of pluralism, encapsulated in the state ideology known as the Pancasila, which protects equal rights for all recognized religions. Ahok, the governor of Jakarta, was found by the court to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, and because of that he is sentenced by two years of imprisonment. Ahok’s case makes it clear now that Indonesia’s pluralism is in peril.

Colloquium

Michael Stanley-Baker on "Medicine and Religion in Early Imperial China"

Workshop: Emergent Spheres of the Secular in Colonial Asia

An international, comparative and trans-disciplinary workshop organised within the framework of the research programme of the KFG “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Be-yond Modernities”. The workshop seeks to further develop the theoretical and methodological framework of the KFG, and to provide historical analyses that are likely to suggest a variety of indications for possible path dependencies, to be further investigated by researchers concentrating on more recent periods.

Summer retreat

Colloquium

Pierce Salguero (Penn State University): Healing and/or Salvation? The Relationship Between Secular Medicine and Religious Practice in Medieval Chinese Buddhism

An investigation of how Buddhist writings discursively constructed and defended the boundaries between secular medicine and religious practice. The analysis focuses squarely on the emic language, categories, and logics of the Buddhist texts themselves, as they were translated in China between the third and ninth centuries.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Ali Safa'at (University of Brawijaya): Indonesian secularity. An Analysis of State and Islam Relation on Legal Development

"Indonesia is neither a secular state nor a religious state." This sentence is often used to describe the relationship between state and religion in Indonesia based on Pancasila, especially since the New Order era. In Indonesia there has been a real process of secularisation. Starting from the formation of the state with organs that different and separate from religious institutions to the political realities that desacralised. On the other hand, the first principle of Pancasila as state ideology is “Believe in One and only God” as well as Article 29 of the 1945 Constitution expressly states that "the State is based on Belief in One and Only God". This constitutional framework has legal implication and some of the religious law (substance of the Sharia) become state law.
The goal of this study is to explore the historical background and the process of nation state formation as a path of secularisation, to explain the different forms of secularity, nmaley the institutionalisation and type of Indonesian secularity. The phenomenon that will be seen as a result of the dynamic interaction is law as norm made by the state, the institutions and judicial decisions (constitutional court decision), as well as the political state institutions associated with religious authorities. This study uses three theoretical frameworks. First is the relation of religion and state, secondly, religion and state in Islamic perspective, and third, theory of multiple secularities. The religious and state relations framework is used to map the debates among founding fathers concerning the idea of the state and religion relation. Religion and the State in Islamic perspective is used as a framework to map and analyse the idea of the Islamic groups in Indonesia. Multiple secularities theory is used as a framework to analyse the objectives and ways of secularisation as well as identifying the problems to be solved by.

Muktiono (University of Brawijaya): “Decoding Indonesia’s Secularity through the Dynamic Development of Blasphemy Law”

The blasphemy law of Indonesia as legal text has imprinted the interactive patterns of how the multiple actors in such a multicultural country are negotiating, contesting and balancing their religious interests in public sphere under the common state ideology of Pancasila, which put the principle of Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa (the God as the Only One) at the very first place. The shifts of Indonesian political and legal regimes in fact always agree to uphold the existence of blasphemy law although every of them provides diverse responses to the implementation and application of the law due to the dynamics of social, cultural, political, and legal contexts. Therefore, the features and future of Indonesia’s secularity as the concept of managing national diversity and integrity to some extent will be decoded and explained from the development of blasphemy law in wider perspective based on the thesis that the law is part of power instrument and social system.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Dagmar Schwerk (Hamburg University): "Bhutan in Transition: Metamorphosis and Institutionalisation of Buddhist Concepts"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Nadine Sieveking (Göttingen University): "Negotiating the boundaries of a secular art world within local Muslim contexts: Perspectives from contemporary choreographers in Senegal"

Colloquium

R. Santosh (IIT Madras, Chennai): Engaging with the secular: Some reflections on the contemporary Muslim scenario in Kerala, South India

The contemporary identity articulations of Muslims in India have been deeply shaped by factors such as the specificity of Indian secular constitution that guarantees the minorities with the right to religion and personal laws, the multi-religious context of Indian society and incessant Islamic reformist attempts leading to contestations over theological and organizational issues. All these factors directly or indirectly compelled the community to engage with various dimensions of modernity including the ideals of progress and secularism while engendering a steady process of secularization where Muslim organizations increasingly began to use secular-liberal discourses to articulate their demands and identity. This has become prominent in the context of the rise of Hindu right wing and more recently in the background of the event in which a group of Muslims from Kerala fled to Afghanistan and joined ISIS. In this paper, I draw examples from the Muslims of Kerala to explore several episodes of their engagement with the discourses and practices of secularism in avenues such as civil society activism, communal harmony initiatives, denouncement of religious extremism and in the construction and authentication of a ‘true Islam’ for its members.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Iva Lucic: "Religion, Nation-building and Secularity: the Bosnian Muslims in Socialist Yugoslavia"

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Silke Gülker: "Transcendence in Scientific Work. Investigating Stem Cell Research in Germany and the United States"

The project investigates the role of transcendence constructions in scientific work. Transcendence construction means, in principle, the construction of boundaries between what is assumed as available and not available. Based on the distinction suggested by Schütz and Luckmann between small, intermediate, and great transcendences, the project develops a research perspective that emphasizes the continuity between dealing with innerworldly and dealing with otherworldly unavailabilities.
The empirical analysis is based on two ethnographic case studies in international stem cell research laboratories, one located in the United States and one in Germany. Combining biographical interviews and work observation, it is analyzed in how far concrete entities, such as cells and animals, or the world as a whole are constructed as (un-)available—and in how far these constructions differ between different contexts. Transcendence constructions always have to do with ethical considerations on the one hand and content-related considerations on the other hand: It is about what can (not) be changed and what should (not) be changed. The empirical analysis illustrates how both questions are closely intertwined.
Theoretically, the project argues for disentangling the meaning of transcendence constructions from the meaning of religion. While there is a strong relation between the two, the analysis of transcendence constructions as such is important to understand the ideological foundations of societies, also without deciding whether a particular construction is to be named religious or not.


If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend the colloquium, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Workshop on "Muslim Secularities: Explorations into Concepts of Distinction and Practices of Differentiation"

The Workshop will take place on 18–20 June 2017 at Leipzig University, Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Kolleg-Forschergruppe, KFG) „Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" in preparation for a special issue of Historical Social Research ed. by Markus Dressler, Armando Salvatore, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (workshop organisers).

Public Keynote: Neguin Yavari on "Politics Made in the Medieval Islamic World"

Neguin Yavari's public lecture is part of our Workshop on "Muslim Secularities".

Public Keynote: Bryan Turner on "One or Many Modernities? Towards a Macro Sociology of Secularization"

Bryan Turner`s public lecture will inaugurate our Workshop on "Muslim Secularities".

Colloquium

Alexander van der Haven: "Secular as Religion: Making Religion in Darwin's Century"

In 1894, judge Daniel Paul Schreber, who owing to Freud would become one of history’s best-­known psychiatric cases, was forced to admit that despite having come under the influence of popular-scientific Darwinian literature, there was such a thing as God. The reason was simple: continuous revelations of an undeniable existence of a superhuman realm. Although Schreber claimed never to have been a ‘despiser of religion’ altogether, he presented these events as having become a religious believer, as having exchanged his alliance to secular, scientific, knowledge for a commitment to religious, revealed, knowledge. Yet, a thorough reading of Schreber’s famous memoirs, which outline a new religious worldview based on these experiences, shows that this dichotomy of ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ knowledge veils a far more complex relationship, not only in Schreber’s thought but also representative of his intellectual milieu. This relationship is one not only between traditional religious epistemologies and modern scientific epistemology, but also between what is traditionally seen as the two distinct superhuman and ‘this‐worldly’ realms. Schreber’s true conversion was not from secular to religious knowledge, but accepting that religious and secular knowledge as well as the superhuman and worldly realm cannot be separated.

Colloquium

Julia Heilen: "Law and Religion in Morocco: The Example of Moroccan Criminal Law".

In the broader context of the dissertation project on “Women in Moroccan Criminal Law – An Analysis of Penal Decisions of the Cour de Cassation” (Frauen im marokkanischen Strafrecht – eine Analyse strafrechtlicher Entscheidungen des Cour de Cassation, working title) this fellowship project aims to analyse how much and what Islamic influence can still be identified in current Moroccan criminal law. Islamic law (aš-šarīca) means to Muslims the law ascribed to God’s revelation and developed from different sources, which regulate the relations of men to God, to their fellow men, as well as to the state authority and to all God‘s creatures in terms of commandments and prohibitions; its application passes through a process of human interpretation within the meaning of Islamic jurisprudence (al-fiqh). Until the 10th century a highly complex and heterogeneous system developed. Concrete demarcation between the religious and the non-religious within this system have to be looked at in the specific context of regions and periods, e.g. parallel jurisdictions. Remarkably external and internal changes mark many of the Muslim countries in the 19th century, with large impacts on Islamic law, especially Islamic criminal law, which was often either abolished or reformed. My fellowship project focuses on current Moroccan criminal law in terms of the Code Pénal and Code de Procédure Pénale. The analysis will concentrate on two types of cases: persisting religious infractions, e.g. blasphemy or fornication, and more indirect influences like certain time limits. For this purpose the legislation will be analysed in its current form as well as in its genesis. Additionally the results should be contextualised by comparison to classical Maliki law and to the French Penal Code.

Colloquium

Katja Triplett: "Buddhism and Medicine in Pre-modern Japan and Beyond"

The paper introduces an overview of the adaptation and implementation of Buddhism and medicine in Japan to situate a case study on sixteenth/seventeenth century debates involving these two fields. In early and medieval Japan (sixth to fifteenth century), secularity as a modality of making distinctions was connected to the question of boundary demarcation between Chinese-style cultural techniques including medicine, and complex traditions usually classified as religious such as Daoism, Buddhism and Shintō. A closer look at the emic discourses reveals a dynamic and also contested situation of boundary demarcation activity in regard to religion and medicine. Proponents of the ruling elite in Japan interpreted classifications of religion and other spheres from a different framework from outside of Japan in specific ways, based on their institutional ancestral clan organization. After Buddhism emerged as a powerful incorporation regime of its own, the new influx of ideas and practices from Europe, European colonies in Asia and from China and Korea in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries not only stimulated the intra-cultural boundary demarcation regarding religion and medicine but also inter-cultural boundary negotiations in the case of direct encounters between Europeans, Japanese Christian converts, Buddhists and Neo-Confucian officials. The paper highlights changes in debates during these turbulent times.

Colloquium

Anindita Chakrabarti: "Adjudicating Personal Law: An Ethnography of Judicial Practice in Sharia Courts of Kanpur and Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (India)"

The paper is an ethnographic foray into adjudication of personal law. In India, the phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ is conditioned and facilitated by the commitment of the democratic state for socio-cultural diversity. The Article 29 (1) of the Indian Constitution promises that ‘any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same’. Although the community adjudicating institutions such as the Islamic Courts or the dar ul qazas function in this constitutional framework, every citizen also has the right to approach any civil court as and when they deem necessary. This institutional framework of judicial pluralism exists in uncomfortable tension with the Constitution’s directive principle that suggests formulation of a uniform civil code (UCC). While the issue of personal law of the religious minorities, especially Muslims, has been the cynosure of the UCC debate, there is a paucity of ethnography on the judicial praxis and litigants’ experience of conflict resolution. The present study draws on ethnographic
material from the Sharia Courts of Kanpur and Lucknow. The details of adjudication of ‘personal’ dispute—where family, affect and property are the key issues—make us rethink the relation between the civil and religious judicial spaces.

Colloquium

​Monika Wohlrab-Sahr & Christoph Kleine: Research Programme and Current State of Work of the KFG

Reading: Research Programme​​ (Link below)

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture: Ist der Islam säkularisierbar?

Our Senior Researcher Daniel Kinitz will not only ask the question whether Islam is secularizable as the title of his lecture suggests. He will elaborate on theoretical questions that come along if people talk about "the" Islam or "the" Secularity and discuss possible answers with examples from diverse areas such as: sharia and law, Quran and fundamentalism or religion and arts.

Colloquium

Sana Chavoshian and Nahid Mozaffari: "From Anti-Western Nativists to Post-Islamist Religious Intellectuals: Trajectories in Iranian Intellectual History."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Nahid Mozaffari "Sites of Secularity in Early Twentieth Century Iran".

Reading: M.A. JamâIzadeh: Persian Is (as Sweet as) Sugar

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Eva-Maria Tepest on "Translating Religion-as-Culture: Contemporary Arab Psychoanalytic Thought".

Reading: El Shakry, Omnia. 2014. ‘The Arabic Freud: The Unconscious and the Modern Subject.’ Modern Intellectual History 11 (01): 89-118.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Chair: Hubert Seiwert

Reading: Stausberg, Michael. “Distinctions, Differentiations, Ontology, and Non-humans in Theories of Religion.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 22/4 (2010): 354–74.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Chair: Christoph Kleine

Reading: Mark Teeuwen: "Early Modern Secularism? Views on Religion in Seji kenbunroku (1816)" Japan Review 25 (2013): 3-19.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Public Lecture: Religion and Politics in Iran

Public Lecture by our Senior Fellow Dr. Nahid Mozaffari on "Politics and Religion in Iran: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Dilemmas."

Colloquium

Presentation: Rinku Lamba on "Rabindranath Tagore's Conception of Religion."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

​Presentation: Anna Mrozek on "Religious Freedom and Secularism in the Frame of the German Constitution."

Reading: Christine Langenfeld, Sarah Mohsen: Germany: The teacher head scarf case. January 2005. International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 3, Issue 1, pp. 86-94, 2005.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Monika Wohlrab-Sahr on "The Study of Islam and the Study of Secularity – a Difficult Relationship."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Sana Chavoshian on "Differentiations: Piety and Politics among Female Religious Circles in Iran"

Reading: Charles Hirschkind: Is there a Secular Body? In: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 633–647.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Mohammad Magout on "Applying 'Multiple Secularites' to a Transnational Setting: Social Interaction between international students at Two Ismaili Institutes for Islamic Studies in London."

Reading: Parts of chapter 6 of Mohammad Magout's dissertation "Between Religion and Culture: Academic Discourse and Religious Subjectivity at Two Nizari Ismaili Institutions for Islamic Studies in London."

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Start of our series of public lectures with Markus Dreßler

On 6 December our Senior Researcher Markus Dreßler successfully started the KFG's series of public lectures with his talk on "Religion and Politics in Turkey".

Colloquium

Presentation: Ruth Mas on Talal Asad.

Reading: Talal Asad: What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like? (chapter 1 in: Formations of the Secular (2003), 21-66).

Attention please, it's a Monday!

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Thesis Defence

Our Junior Researcher Mohammad Magout will publicly defend his doctoral thesis "Between Religion and Culture: Academic Discourse and Religious Subjectivity at Two Nizari Ismaili Institutions for Islamic Studies in London".

Colloquium

Introduction of our new fellows Nahid Mozaffari, Anna Mrozek and Eva Tepest.

Attention please, this is a Tuesday!

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Chair: Hubert Seiwert

Reading: Martin, David (2014): The Political Future of Religion. In: Martin, David: Religion and Power. No Logos without Mythos. Ashgate.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Sushmita Nath - Between ‘Faith’ and ‘Discovery’: Gandhi’s Religious Politics and the Question of Secularity in India.

Reading: Sudipta Kaviraj: 'Languages of Secularity,' Economic and Political Weekly, vol. XLVIII, no. 50, 2013.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Tom Troughton on "Implications of the secular as an aspect of second dissemination of Tibetan Mahāyāna"

Reading: Guntram Hazod: From the ‘Good Tradition’ to Religion: On some basic aspects of religious conversion in early medieval Tibet and the comparative Central Eurasian Context. History and Anthropology 2015 vol. 26 no. 1, 36-54.

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Colloquium

Presentation: Armando Salvatore on "A ‘Soft Secular Distinction’ in the Islamic Ecumene? Dynamics of Adab and Shari’a"

Reading: Colonial Blueprints of Order and Civility (chapter 6 in: Armando Salvatore: The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility, First Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2016.)

If scholars from outside the KFG "Multiple Secularities" wish to attend one of our colloquia, please send a short inquiry to multiple.secularities[at]uni-leipzig.de

Inaugural ceremony and opening lecture "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities"

On June 27, 2016 the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" had its inaugural ceremony.

Opening lecture
Andrew March (Yale University): “What is the ‘Civil State’ in Islamic Political Thought?”

Kick-off Workshop "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities"

The initial meeting of the HCAS’s prospective research fellows created a sound foundation for the future collaborative work on “multiple secularities”.
From June 27 to June 29, 2016, 34 speakers presented their research projects within the broader research programme of the HCAS and discussed them with the audience.