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Dear friends and colleagues,

this week we have a preview of the keynote lecture that Reinhard Schulze will give at our conference in October for you – we will be sharing more details about the conference in the coming weeks, stay tuned! We would also like to welcome a new colleague and farewell to a number of fellows whose fellowships have come to an end.  Quiet August is almost over and we have a seminar with Leibniz Professor Malachi Hacohen to announce. We also want to draw your attention to three publications and one lecture by Sebastian Rimestad.

Take care and have a good week!
Foteine & Johannes

Conference Preview: Keynote by Reinhard Schulze

As a preview of our Final Conference in October we are pleased to announce that Reinhard Schulze will give a keynote lecture on The Normative Status of Secularity and Islamic Genealogies of Worldliness.

Abstract: In the course of its research activities, the KFG Multiple Secularities has successfully worked on the development of a new research paradigm that focuses on a synchronic as well as diachronic examination of global processes of differentiation of religious and secular orders. It remains a matter of debate whether "secularity" can be expanded into an analytical concept that could serve as a key term for a transcultural theory of the modern order of religion and the world. It is still undecided whether (1) there can be a global theory of secularity at all beyond the nominalistic content of the term and, if so, whether (2) such a “realist” theory can also be applied diachronically to traditions for which the term "secularity" has not been empirically documented. Furthermore, (3) the question must be clarified how the process leading to the differentiation of a normative order into religious and worldly orders can be modelled historiographically. Finally, (4) it is to be determined more precisely whether, in a world-historical perspective, there is today a normative order that has standardised the religion and secularity order, and, if so, how they have genealogically converged in a standardised order of modern "secularity". I would like to pursue these questions in the context of the history of the Islamic tradition and propose preliminary answers.

We are looking forward to meet as many of you as possible at the conference, please register via multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.

Date: 12 October 2023, 7 p.m.
Venue: Lecture Hall, Bibliotheca Albertina, Beethovenstraße 6, 04107 Leipzig

Conference date: 12-14 October 2023

Fellows at the KFG: Welcome and Farewell

This week we want to welcome Senior Research Fellow Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm. He will stay with us until January 2024 and will work on his research on Religions of Science and the Materializations of Secularity in North America, Europe, and Japan. Jason has already been with us in 2020 and we are very glad to have him back!

Further, we have to say goodbye to Senior Research Fellow Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç this week. Gökçen spend the last six months at the KFG, focussing on The Battle of Superstition: Alevis and the Construction of Islamic Orthodoxy in Secular Turkey. We also wish farewell to Senior Research Fellow Augustine Agwuele who has been with us since June, working on his project Religionization and Secularization of communicative gestures among Yoruba people. Dear Gökçen and Augustine, thank you for enriching our centre with you contributions – academically and personally. We wish you all the best!

New Publications and Lecture by Sebastian Rimestad

Our Senior Research Fellow Sebastian Rimestad recently published three articles:

Rimestad, Sebastian. "Spreading the Catholic Faith in the Periphery: Jesuit Mission in Polish Livonia (1625–1772)." Entangled Religions 14, no. 6 (2023). 

Rimestad, Sebastian, and Knut Martin Stünkel. “Hegemonic Confessions at the Baltic Periphery: Religious Contact in the Early Modern Baltic Region.” Entangled Religions 14, no. 6 (2023). 

Haas, Daniel, Eugene Lyutko, and Sebastian Rimestad. “‘God Prepares the Way for his Light to enter into the terrible Darkness of Muscovy': Exchange and Mobility between Halle Pietism and Russian Orthodox Clergy in the 18th Century." Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa 68, no. 1 (2023):193–219.

Further, Sebastian gave a lecture on Eberhard Gutsleff the Younger (1691-1749) - a Pietist and Herrnhuter among Orthodox Lutherans (in German) at an international conference on Pietism in Baltic History organised by the National Library of Latvia, the Francke Foundations in Halle and the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Pietism at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.

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.