Materiality II: Material Religion

Materiality II: Material Religion

 

Full day PhD course at ToRS,

Friday, November 1st. 2013, 9:15-16:00

Location: 
9:15-12:30 Auditorium (Auditorium 22.1.11)
13:30-16:00 Room 10-4-05 (KUA2)

Keynote speakers

  • Matthew Engelke, London School of Economics
  • Tim Flohr Sørensen, Aarhus University
  • Andreas Bandak, University of Copenhagen

Call for papers

“All religion is material religion. All religion has to be understood in relation to the media of its materiality […] But the difficult part comes in understanding what precisely constitutes the materiality of material religion, what makes religious materiality either significant or religious, and according to whom.” So writes Matthew Engelke in Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies in 2012. This PhD seminar aims to explore, discuss and question such premise through case studies.

It is by now clear that religious conflicts are most often mediated, if not centred, on the specific way people engage with objects when conceptualising God, spirits, or practicing religious doctrines. Whether we are talking about image prohibition, exhibitions of religious objects, food preparation, or destruction of saint shrines, the material world forces scholars dealing with religious topics to take material mediation and materialisation into account. In this second seminar on materiality, we open up for questions concerning the materiality of religion, such as (but not limited to):

  • Are there particular kinds of distinctions at play between materiality, immateriality, and processes of materialisation when we are dealing with religious themes, compared to politics, consumption, architecture?
  • What role do less tangible, yet still highly material aspects of religious experience play, such as light, sound, smell, or atmospheres?
  • What form does materiality take when religious matters become part of public politics in supposedly secular contexts?
  • How do institutional forms of representation, for instance museums, heritage sites, or tourism industry, represent or abstain from representing, objects, in response to political, ideological or religious positions on material understandings?
  • How are notions of death and afterlife reconfiguring or configured by notions of the material and immaterial?
  • Or how are new technologies incorporated into religious experiences or conceptualisation?

In essence, the seminar invites papers that explore the role materiality, or deliberate absence of such, plays in past or present societies, including literature and arts.

Format:

9.15: Welcome
9.30: Matthew Engelke, London School of Economics: Things in religion/religion in things
10.30: Coffee break
10.45: Tim Flohr Sørensen, University of Aarhus: Immanent Transcendence. Seeing the light in Danish Churches
11.30: Coffee break
11.45: Andreas Bandak, University of Copenhagen: Crossing the visible. Material encounters with the divine in Damascus
12.30: Lunch (at your own expense unless presenting)

Session II: Closed session for PhD students, building 10-4-05 (KUA 2)
13.30: Discussion of pre-circulated paper by Benedikte Møller Kristensen, University of Copenhagen
14.30: Pause
14.45: Discussion of pre-circulated paper by Emma Molin, Stockholm University
15.45: Final comments

Further information and registration for the PhD seminar contact: Mikkel Bille, mbille@hum.ku.dk. Deadline 14th October. Following information is needed:

  • Name
  • Institutional and disciplinary affiliation
  • Your pre-circulated paper, if you are presenting
  • If you are signing up for the dinner