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Dear friends and colleagues,

September has begun and with it a time of increasing activities and events at KFG. After our summer break, the colloquium will start again next Wednesday with Elisabeth Marx who presents her research project on the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan.

We also warmly welcome two new fellows to our KFG team: Amandine Barb and Dietrich Jung.

Besides that, we want to remind you of the upcoming Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of Religions and we have a recommendation for a Book Presentation for you. We also have an event recommendation for you for Leipzig's largest Art Festival - the “Night of Art”.

Enjoy and have a good week!    

Anja & Lucy

Welcome New Fellows to KFG

We warmly welcome two new Senior Research Fellows to KFG: Dietrich Jung will be working on his project on “Islamic Modernities in World Society” and stay with us until the end of the year. He is Professor and Head of the Center for Modern Middle East and Muslim Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

We also welcome Amandine Barb to KFG. In her research project she will focus on “Governing Religious Diversity in a (Post)Secular Age: Teaching about Religion in American Public Schools”. Amandine will stay with us for the next six months. Before coming to Leipzig, she worked as a Visiting Lecturer at the Institute for Religious Studies at Leibniz University Hannover.

Welcome both of you – we look forward to a lively exchange and good cooperation!

Next week’s colloquium: Elisabeth Marx on “Notions of the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan”

Next Wednesday we will be back with our colloquium: Our Junior Researcher Elisabeth Marx will give a presentation on her research project “Notions of the Secular in Intellectual Discourse on Japan”. Since the end of the 1960s, we can observe an increased interest in conception of the secular in Japan. Still, the debates about certain notions stay rather marginalized compared to the strong notion of the separation of religion and state (seikyo bunri 政教分離) and its legal disputes. However, secularities are not only limited to matters of the religion-state relationship. Only a few works, e.g. Fujiwara Satoko's “Secularization Theory in the 1990s” (1998), have approached other conceptions within the Japanese intellectual debates, but there was no attempt to give an informed overview of post-war engagements with conceptions of the secular in general so far. This project aims to fill this void and to raise the question of how the secular is perceived concerning Japan these days.

As usual, you find the relevant reading in the member area. The colloquium will take place as a hybrid event. If you would like to attend in person, please register via e-mail . The number of physically present participants again is limited to 10 people. In the member area, you will also find the zoom connection data in case you plan to join the colloquium online.

8 September | 9.15–11.45 a.m. (CET)

Hybrid format | Strohsack, 4.55 and via zoom

Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of Religions on "Religion in Relation", 13–16 September: Registration as participant

The XXXIV. Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of Religions (Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft) is just around the corner and we would like to point out that it is still possible to register as a participant. Organised by the Institute for the Study of Religions at Leipzig University, there will be a variety of panel sessions and discussions during four days on the overall topic “Religion in Relation”. This framework theme was deliberately chosen so that it intersects as much as possible with the research questions of the Multiple Secularities Project. There will be several panels with the participation of KFG fellows.

Registration is possible via this website.

Conference Date: 13–16 September

“Night of Art” Festival in Leipzig

Now in its 12th year, residents and entrepreneurs of Georg-Schumann-Straße in the Northern part of Leipzig are organising the Night of Art – Leipzig's largest art festival. On 4 September, around 60 exhibitions will transform the street and its neighbouring districts into Leipzig's longest art mile for one night. Artists show their work in unusual places – shops, passageways, living rooms, churches or empty rooms. The exhibitions are accompanied by concerts, join-in activities, a family programme and street food.

All exhibitions, concerts and activities are free of charge.

4 September | 4.00–12.00 p.m. (CET)

If you have any content that you think suits the purpose of the weekly, please feel free to send it to us at multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.