Call for Papers: Cultural Impacts of the Reformation
The international congress "Cultural Impacts of Reformation" at the old LEUCOREA University in Lutherstadt Wittenberg from 7-11 August 2017 aims at a profound understanding and a new description of the impacts of Reformation. The congress therefore recalls the cultural turn’s methodological and theoretical impulses.
Three panels depict the Reformations impacts starting with transformations between Reformation and cultural contexts, following the global spread of protestant beliefs in new cultural contexts, and the cultural fields of Reformations present receptions. The panels emphasise impacts within a course of transformations on various cultural fields, having a formative and normative strength for cultural identities, which is to be detected in a high variety of disciplinary perspectives.
For ‚postreformation’ history of christianity until present times a broader view on Reformations impacts seems adequate. Later references to reformation, e.g. in the era of Pietism/Puritanism and enlightenment, may be figured out as impacts, but are as well critical receptions of what may be and may be not intentions of the Reformations era. Adaptations of that kind are in many forms normative for protestant and cultural identities. Being a term of common sense the concept of an impact also seems to be in need of revision both methodologically and theoretically. The global extension of ‚postreformation’ denominations and the building of modern Protestantism also have to be described as phenomena of discontinuity and even rupture. This task can be accepted by researching cultural texts and contexts of ‚postreformation’ christianity (and worldwide beliefs) in arts and media, in politics and law, in forms of knowledge and of life, and last but not least in expressions and representations of religion itself. Only in this broader view impacts of Reformation can be identified in a pluralistic and individualistic culture.
Each day of the conference is divided into two parts: each morning, two keynote lectures will be presented followed by discussions. The sections are linked to the panels in order to give focus to the conference and its documentation.
Researchers are invited to send an abstract in English or German (max. 3.000 characters, space characters included) to kongress@leucorea.uni-halle.de before December 1st, 2016. The abstract should outline the researchers academic discourse with an innovative perspective and within an interdisciplinary context. The abstract is to be related to a congress section. A contribution to a section lasts 20 min.
