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Dear friends and colleagues,

We wish you a happy and healthy new year. May it be better than the last two years, in which we were forced to reduce many of the things we all would have liked to do: travelling, sitting together and interacting closely, sharing coffee-breaks and lunch or a beer after work. It will come back! 

With our first newsletter of the year we update you on the latest news from our KFG. Despite the ongoing pandemic situation our team is making every effort to keep the fellowship and workshop programme at the heart of the project running, and to keep our Centre going as a lively enterprise beyond mere academic exchange. Not least the number of recent publications presented in this newsletter speaks of the fruitful environment that our group has been able to provide in spite of the obstacles we had – and have – to overcome. The calls and announcements of future events promise many opportunities to continue our cooperation in the year ahead – although you will also notice that some workshops had to be postponed due to the recent developments. 

We are saying goodbye to the fellows who left us in 2021 and looking forward to welcome new colleagues to our group very soon.

You will see that we can look back on an eventful period and look forward to a productive year ahead, for which we have many things planned. We will continue to make the best of the situation and use our resources to facilitate a lively and fruitful exchange despite times of physical distance. We will keep you posted.

Last but not least: Our warm congratulations to those colleagues whose families have expanded over the last months or will so soon. We are keen to see the babies!

All the best for 2022!

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Christoph Kleine

Currently, we are not offering any new fellowships. For inquiries please contact Johannes Duschka.

​Call for Abstracts: KFG-Workshop on “(Im)Materiality of the Secular City: Trials and Tribulations”| 23–24 June 2022

Convenors: Mariam Goshadze, Margaux Fitoussi and Thomas Schmidt-Lux 

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.” Inspired by the British Israeli architect Eyal Wiezman’s contention that the materiality of the built world has a life of its own, the goal of this workshop is to probe into the distinctive force of secular architecture and the processes of destruction and construction involved in its production. 

The workshop is planned to include the three thematic clusters of erasing religious pasts, assembling secular futures, and theoretical paradigms.

If you wish you participate, please send your abstract to multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.

Deadline for abstracts (200–300 words) and short biography: 31 January 
Notification of acceptance: 1 March
Deadline for short papers (2000 words): 31 May

Workshop: 23–24 June

KFG Workshop: “Multiple Secularities in Africa and the Diaspora” | NEW DATE: 1–3 June 2022

Convenors: Marian Burchardt, Magnus Echtler and Katharina Wilkens

This workshop seeks to tackle epistemological distortions and blind spots through empirical studies of African social realities. In particular, we are interested in the heuristic values of divergent conceptualisations (religious/secular, spiritual/material, sacred/profane, transcendent/immanent, or singularly mundane). Regarding Africa and its diaspora, the power/knowledge topography of religion and secularity surely requires deeper investigation. With the concept of multiple secularities, the workshop propose to investigate the various ways in which religious and other social spheres or fields of practice are conceptually distinguished and institutionally differentiated.

New Date: 1–3 June

Hybrid event format: on-site event at Leipzig University and online via Zoom.

If you wish to attend the workshop, please send a short inquiry to multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.

Screening Religion

The winter programme of our Screening Religion film series got off to a bumpy start. Due to the current situation we were unable to show the film "Dealing with Death" in November and our film for January "Outback Rabbis" also had to be cancelled. We are trying to find alternative dates and hope that we will be able to show the documentary "Between God and I" (MOZ, 2018, doc, 60 min, directed by Yara Costa) at the Cinémathèque Leipzig on 16 March as planned. Check out the trailer here.

Screening Religion: Every two months we screen documentaries and movies rarely seen in German cinemas. Religion features in every film, be it as a catalyst for negotiation processes or a source of conflict, a marker of identity or a constitutive element of social background. Thus, we seek to screen films on religion whilst simultaneously screening for “religion” as a cinematic object. Some of the films are presented by their directors, others are introduced by KFG scholars.

Up-to-date information and the full programme can be found on our website.

Publications

The work of our research group finds expression in various publication formats. In addition to monographs, edited volumes, and articles by individual members of the research group, we also make (preliminary) research results available for academic discourse in the form of working papers. 

Recent KFG publications:

Books

• Heilen, Julia. Entwicklung strafrechtlicher Normen im Sultanat und Königreich Marokko am Beispiel von Sexual- und Sittlichkeitsdelikten. Leipzig Middle East Studies 4. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2021.
• Laliberté, André. China in a Secular Age: Coping with the Legacy of a Religious State. Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences Series. Boston: Brill, 2021.
• Makrides, Vasilios N., and Sebastian Rimestad, eds. The Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016 - A New Era for the Orthodox Church? Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Erfurter Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte des orthodoxen Christentums 19. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021.
• Merdjanova, Ina, ed. Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.
• Mullins, Mark. Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021.

Articles

• Chakrabarti, Anindita. “Religious Freedom, Legal Activism, and Muslim Personal Law in Contemporary India: A Sociological Exploration of Secularism.” In Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches. Edited by Olga Breskaya, Roger Finke and Giuseppe Giordan, 35–58. Brill, 2021.
• Chavoshian, Sana. “From Military Hero to Martyr: Crafting Singularity and the Formation of Muslim Collective Subjectivity in an Iranian Statist Ritual.” Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 75, no. 3 (2021): 859–79.
• Darwish, Housamedden. “On the Renovation of Religious Discourse: An Analysis of Concepts of Internal and External Disciplines.” Teosofi: Jurnal Tasawuf dan Pemikiran Islam 11, no. 2 (2021): 240–69.
• Hermann, Adrian. “European History of Religion, Global History of Religion: On the Expansion of a Gladigowian Concept for the Study of Religion.” In Religion in Culture — Culture in Religion: Burkhard Gladigow's Contribution to Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Religion. Edited by Christoph Auffarth, Alexandra Grieser and Anne Koch, 237–68. Universität Tübingen, 2021.
• Jung, Dietrich. “Islamism, Islamic Modernism and the Search for Modern Authenticity in an Imaginary Past.” Religions 12, no. 11 (2021): 1–13.
• Junginger, Horst. “Etsi deus non daretur: die Säkularität von Religionswissenschaft.” In Religion in Culture — Culture in Religion: Burkhard Gladigow's Contribution to Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Religion. Edited by Christoph Auffarth, Alexandra Grieser and Anne Koch, 119–40. Universität Tübingen, 2021.
• Kneitz, Peter. “A Magic Momentum: Negotiating Authority in the Bongolava Region, Madagascar.” In Challenging Authorities: Ethnographies of Legitimacy and Power in Eastern and Southern Africa. Edited by Arne S. Steinforth and Sabine Klocke-Daffa, 319–45. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• Köhrsen, Jens, and Fabian Huber. “A Field Perspective on Sustainability Transitions: The Case of Religious Organizations.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 40, no. 3 (2021): 408–20.
• Seiwert, Hubert. “Professionalisierung der Religionswissenschaft: Burkhard Gladigow in der Deutschen Vereinigung für Religionsgeschichte.” In Religion in Culture — Culture in Religion: Burkhard Gladigow's Contribution to Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Religion. Edited by Christoph Auffarth, Alexandra Grieser and Anne Koch, 53–68. Universität Tübingen, 2021. 
• Storm, Jason Ānanda Josephson. “Monism and the Religion of Science.” Nova Religio 25, no. 2 (2021): 12–39.
• Tafjord, Bjørn Ola. “On the (Un)Doing of Anthropology and Secularity, and Its Relevance for Religious Studies.” Religion 51, no. 4 (2021): 614–22.
• Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika and Florian Zemmin. "Die Relevanz der Säkularisierungstheorie im globalen Zeitalter: Frey, Christiane / Hebekus, Uwe / Martyn, David (Hrsg.), Säkularisierung. Grundlagentexte zur Theoriegeschichte, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 2020." Soziologische Revue 44, no. 4 (2021): 506-517.
• Zemmin, Florian and Henning Sievert. “Conceptual History of the Near East. The Sattelzeit as a Heuristic Tool for Interrogating the Formation of a Multilayered Modernity.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 16, no. 2 (2021): 1-26.
• Zemmin, Florian. "The Modern Prophet: Rashīd Riḍā's Construction of Muḥammad as Religious and Social Reformer." In The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam. Edited by Rachida Chih, Stefan Reichmuth, und David Jordan, 349-69. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

Five Responses to Hubert Seiwert’s “Theory of Religion and Historical Research. A Critical Realist Perspective on the Study of Religion as an Empirical Discipline”:

In November 2020, our Permanent Senior Research Fellow Hubert Seiwert published an article on “Theory of Religion and Historical Research. A Critical Realist Perspective on the Study of Religion as an Empirical Discipline” in the Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft (Journal for Religious Studies). His article evoked various reactions, both affirmative and critical. In the current issue of the journal, five responses address some important aspects of that engagement with the article, and Hubert finally discusses these points in the concluding response to his critics.

• Seiwert, Hubert. “Theory of Religion and Historical Research. A Critical Realist Perspective on the Study of Religion as an Empirical Discipline.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 28, no. 2 (2020): 207–36.
• Mark Q. Gardiner and Steven Engler. “Allies in the Fullness of Theory.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 259–67.
• Stausberg, Michael: „The Abyss of Intransitivity: On Critical Realism and Theories of Religion.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 268–74.
• Becker, Carmen: “Returning to the Empirical after the Discursive Turn? A Response to Hubert Seiwert.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 275–80.
• Schmidt-Leukel, Perry: “Religion: Historical Fact or Interpretive Theory? A Response to Hubert Seiwert.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 281–84.
• Taves, Ann: „Religion, Religious: Can Anti-Definitionalists Stay Tethered to the Study of Religion?” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 285–89.
• Seiwert, Hubert. “Reply to the Responses.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 29, no. 2 (2021): 290–98.

Bulletin

Our Bulletin gives the opportunity to publish event reports and to comment on current political, social or cultural events and developments from the perspective of Multiple Secularities, to place them in a broader context through our expertise or to present alternative perspectives. We would like to point to the latest entry: “Conference Report: The Formation of the Concepts of Secularity/Secularism in the Arab/Islamicate Worlds” by our Associate Senior Researcher Housamedden Darwish who organised and chaired this panel as part of the 27th International DAVO Congress.

Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe
"Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities"
Nikolaistraße 8-10, 04109 Leipzig
Mail: multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de

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