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Dear colleagues and friends,

There is a lot going on at the KFG at the moment! We are excited to be therefore able to announce - besides two public lectures and the next session of "Screening Religion" next week – also a KFG workshop on "Sacred Places" in December as well as a brand new reading group on the current book of Talal Asad.

Enjoy!

Screening Religion: Souls of Zen

Next Wednesday, we will show the documentary “Souls of Zen: After the Tsunami – Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan” (Germany 2012) as part of our Screening Religion series.

Tim Graf – anthropologist, scholar of religion, and filmmaker – was just working on a documentary about Zen Buddhism in Japan when the earthquake and tsunami killed almost 20,000 people. The film that followed impressively shows the role played by Japanese Buddhism in caring for the survivors, burying the dead and rebuilding the affected regions. It provides insights into contemporary Zen Buddhism in Japan and at the same time reflects its complex role in what is by definition a secular society characterised by natural disasters, religious pluralism and demographic change.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Tim Graf. The film is in Japanese and English. 

20 November, 7 p.m.
Cinémathèque Leipzig in der nato (Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 46, Leipzig)

Save the date: Workshop on “Sacred Places”

Nurit Stadler (Hebrew University Jerusalem) and Ahmet Kerim Gültekin (Philipp Schwartz Fellow at the KFG) will jointly host a Workshop on “Sacred Places. Changing Interconnections Between Religion and Politics” in early December.

The workshop will focus on the ethnic and territorial aspects of religion by studying sacred places that are located on borders between cities, states, and ethnic/religious regions, as well as in conflict zones and disputed territories. How are sacred sites becoming increasingly relevant in dictating, shaping, and negotiating geopolitical zones, ethnic identities, collective memory, and new political attitudes, as well as in reinventing cultural identities? Karen Barkey (University of Berkeley) will give a keynote on “When Myths and Stories Become Shared Sacred Narratives”.

If you want to attend the workshop and/or the keynote, please register by 28 November at multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de. A detailed programme will be available online next week.

5-7 December 2019
KFG “Multiple Secularities”, Strohsack (Nikolaistraße 8-10)

CfP: Conference on “Rethinking Media, Religion and Secularities”

The existence of secularity in contemporary society and culture is contested in many fields in which scholars of media, religion and culture studies engage. The conference “Rethinking Media, Religion and Secularities” of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture (ISMRS) thus seeks to interrogate assertions and debates around whether the secularisation thesis is dead in a digitalised world as well as the role media plays in communicating and mediating secularity in contemporary society. Deadline for paper proposals: 6 December 2019.

4–7 August 2020
Sigtuna Foundation, Sigtuna, Sweden