Newsletter multiple secularities

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Wednesday Weekly 29 September 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,

At next week’s colloquium, Marian Burchardt will present his latest book. Also the reading group will meet again and invites all interested to join. As the month comes to an end, four of our KFG Fellows are leaving us and we want to say thank you and farewell!

Additionally, we would like to draw your attention to a publication as well as recommend an online talk to you. Today we also mailed our newsletter "Inside Multiple Secularities", which we have linked for you at the end of this Weekly.

Enjoy and have a great week!

Anja & Lucy

Next week’s colloquium: Marian Burchardt’s Book Launch “Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West”

Next Wednesday our Associate Member Marian Burchardt will present his new monograph on “Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West”. His book explores how the state regulates religious diversity and examines the processes whereby religious diversity and expression becomes part of administrative landscapes of nation-states and people’s everyday lives. It argues that religious diversity has become central for governing national and urban spaces.

We will discuss the relevance of his theses on these topics for the concept of Multiple Secularities and for a globally comparative Sociology. As discussants we welcome Hubert Knoblauch, Professor for General Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin and our KFG Fellows Amandine Barb, Dietrich Jung and Hubert Seiwert.

You find the outline of the book here. The colloquium will take place as a hybrid event and starts at 10 a.m. (CET). If you would like to attend in person, please register via e-mail. The number of physically present participants again is limited.

6 October | 10.00 a.m.–12.30 p.m. (CET)

Hybrid format | Strohsack, 4.55 and via zoom

Burchardt, Marian. Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Farewell to KFG Fellows

With the end of September, we again have to say goodbye to some of our Senior Research Fellows: Jens Herzer, Professor for New Testament at the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig University, has been a member of the KFG for the past 12 months working on his project on “Secular ethos and religious conviction: The encounter of early Christianity with Epicurean ethics and its conceptual transformation into a civil religion”.

Mariam Goshadze started her Fellowship in the KFG in January 2021 and focused on her project “The Noise Silence Makes: The Ghanaian State Negotiates Ritual Ban on Noise Making in Accra” for the past nine months.

Bernd-Christian Otto joined the KFG in April 2021 to work on his project on “Psychologisation and Resacralisation Strategies in Western 'Magic(k)' from the 19th to the 21st century”.

Neguin Yavari has been with us in Leipzig for the past three months, working with us on a publication project on Global Secularity.

We thank you all sincerely for your contributions and the good cooperation. You have been a great asset to the project.

Reading Group: Dancing affects!

Next week, the KFG reading group on “Materiality of the Religious/Secular Divide” discusses religious dancing and asks: Can secular dancing affect people in a similar way, or would it then cease to be secular? They read a classic on spirit possession, the conclusion of Maya Deren’s “Divine Horsemen. The Living Gods of Haiti”, and Magnus Echtlers’ text “Scottish warriors in KwaZulu-Natal”. You find some impressions of dancing here.

This time the reading group will take place online. Please feel free to circulate this invitation and please address all your inquiries regarding participation in the reading group to Magnus and Yasemin.

6 October | 2.00–3.30 p.m. (CET)

Online via zoom

New Publication: Ina Merdjanova on “Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity”

We would like to point to a publication by our Senior Research Fellow Ina Merdjanova. Her book on “Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity” fills a significant gap in the sociology of religious practice: Studies focused on women’s religiosity have overlooked Orthodox populations, while studies of Orthodox practice (operating within the dominant theological, historical, and sociological framework) have remained gender-blind. The essays in this collection shed new light on the women who make up a considerable majority of the Orthodox population by engaging women’s lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to their religion in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments.

In addition to her editing function, Ina is the author of one article on “Women, Orthodox Christianity, and Neosecularization in Bulgaria”.

Merdjanova, Ina, ed. Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.

Online talk and discussion: David Ownby on “The Changing Intellectual Landscape in China”

We would like to mention a presentation and discussion with David Ownby, Professor of History of religion in modern and contemporary China at the Université de Montréal and a member of the Centre for Asian Studies at the same institution. On 6 October, he will talk about “The Changing Intellectual Landscape in China”. The event is presented by Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN), a joint initiative by researchers at Humboldt University of Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Technische Universität Berlin.

The talk will be chaired by Sarah Eaton, Professor of Transregional China Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. Discussants will be Biao Xiang, Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Ian Johnson, Author, Journalist and Senior Fellow for Chinese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

6 October | 3.00–5.00 p.m. (CET)

Join the event online

More Information

Inside Multiple Secularities 09/2021

As an addressee of our Wednesday Weekly, you are always the first to be provided with the latest information from our KFG. In addition, we offer our newsletter Inside Multiple Secularities four times a year.

You are welcome to forward the link to the current issue or to the newsletter subscription to interested friends and colleagues. This will keep everyone up to date with the latest projects, publications and events at the KFG.

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.

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

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