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Dear friends and colleagues,

In a two weeks' time we will have our next colloquium - this time with Menachem Lorberbaum, who will be joining our KFG as a Fellow from July. More about this in the next Wednesday Weekly.

Today our KFG workshop "Material Secularities" starts, which will last until Friday. You are still welcome to participate as online listener. We also have a Lecture Series for you, a new Publication, a new Bulletin Entry and a Call for Applications.

KFG-Workshop “Material Secularities” at Leipzig University starts today

Today, our KFG-Workshop on “Material Secularities” has started, convened by our Senior Research Fellow Birgit Meyer and our Senior Researchers Magnus Echtler and Nur Yasemin Ural. The workshop attempts to examine a range of value-laden (and often contested) material-corporeal expressions of secularity. It proposes to examine secularity/the secular/secularism as scholarly as well as political categories always in relation to their co-constituent, namely the religious.

The workshop takes place as a hybrid event and will last until Friday. You are still welcome to register as a listener by sending us an e-mail. As the number of places on-site is limited, registration is now only possible for online participation.  

21–23 June

Strohsack, Room 4.55 and online via zoom

New Bulletin Entry: Podcast with Todd Weir on “Socialist Cultures and Politics of Secularism and Atheism”

Our Senior Research Fellow Todd Weir recently presented his forthcoming book “Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890-1933” in an interview on Steven V. Bittner's History Ex Silo podcast on the New Books Network. Together with Victoria Smolkin he discusses how socialist secularism and atheism were not concerned solely with destroying a tool of class oppression, as Marx had envisioned, but with creating a positive faith in science and materialism.

Moreover, the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities Domain Board has awarded the 2022 Open Competition SSH - M funding round. This funding without any thematic conditions gives the opportunity to carry out research into the subject of their own choice. Among the researchers is also Todd Weir, he receives € 400 000 for his project “Culture Wars and Modern Worldviews: A Transnational Conceptual History”. Congratulations, Todd!

Our Bulletin gives the opportunity 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. If you wish to make short, journalistic style contributions to the Bulletin, please contact Johannes Duschka.

Lecture Series on “What if Christian saints turn out to be Buddhists: The Barlaam and Josaphat legend in Japan and its afterlives”

As part of the lecture series “The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf, our Associate Member Katja Triplett will give a lecture on “What if Christian saints turn out to be Buddhists: The Barlaam and Josaphat legend in Japan and its afterlives” today evening. The event will take place at Freie Universität Berlin and online.

The series is part of the project “The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts, and Communities” at the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”.  

21 June | 6–8 p.m. (CEST)

Freie Universität Berlin, Fabeckstraße 23-25 („Holzlaube“), Room 2.2051, 14195 Berlin AND online

Call for Applications: 3 full-time doctoral positions in project “Global Bones: Entangled Histories, Transfers and Translations in the Early Modern Age”, University of Bern starting on 1 October

Three PhD positions are available in the SNSF-funded project “Global Bones: Entangled Histories, Transfers and Translations in the Early Modern Age” at the Institute of Art History of the University of Bern starting on 1 October. “Global Bones” investigates the global trajectories of Christian body relics in the era usually referred to – from a European perspective - as the Early Modern period. The research project describes and analyses intercontinental relic transfers and conducts local case studies to examine the negotiation processes that took place between actors of different cultural and religious traditions regarding the handling of human remains.

For information about the position, content, or formal questions, please send an e-mail. The application must also be sent (in a single PDF file) via e-mail.

Extended application deadline: 31 July

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.