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Dear friends and colleagues,

This week we would like to draw your attention to three new publications, a call for papers for a KFG workshop and a (nightly) online lecture. Besides that, we have an event recommendation for the African Book Festival and again, a finding that we want to share with you.

And of course, a friendly reminder about our Screening Religion event tonight: At 7 p.m., together with the Cinémathèque Leipzig, we will be showing the award-winning documentary "Bruder Jakob" – a story of a young man in search of a religion that gives his life meaning. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Elí Roland Sachs. The link to the film can be found here.

Enjoy, have a good week and take good care of yourselves and each other!

Publications by Magnus Echtler and Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz

Call for Papers for KFG Workshop on Religion as an Object of Historical and Social Scientific Study

We are happy to announce the Call for Papers for a workshop initiated and organized by our Senior Researcher Florian Zemmin: The two day workshop in November on "Religion as an Object of Historical and Social Scientific Study: Global Perspectives" will bring together case studies and theoretical reflections on the study of religion as an object of historical and social scientific inquiry in different academic contexts in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The global presence and characteristics of religion as an object of study in the most pertinent academic disciplines such as the History of Religion, Comparative Religious Studies, Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science are of special interest.

Abstracts for papers (250 – 350 words) can be submitted together with a short biography.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 April

Date: 4–5 November

Online lecture on the Varieties of Secularism in China, Japan and India

Our Senior Research Fellow Philip Clart points to an online lecture series organized by The University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies and the International House at the University of Chicago: Tomorrow night, Professor Prasenjit Duara, Oscar L. Tang Family Distinguished Professor of East Asian Studies at Duke University will be speaking on "The Varieties of Secularism: China, Japan and India in the Era of Abrahamic Modernity". He develops a comparative frame of reference to discuss the nature of religious accommodation historically in China, India and Japan and Europe particularly with the confessional revolutions of the 16th–17th centuries. He argues that the confessional revolutions played a significant role in the emergence of the self/other (saved/damned) binary of nationalism.

28 January | 12 p.m. (midnight) (CET)
Online via Zoom

Event: African Book Festival: Reading and Performance as livestream

The African Book Festival Berlin considers itself an initiative for more diversity in Berlin’s and Germany’s cultural and literary scene. This year’s first session of the festival will take place in Leipzig with The Leipzig Museum of Ethnography (GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig) as venue. Titled "Voices From the Beginning – Books Born From Songs" the Berlin based writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga and curator of the festival, explores the manifold entanglements of music and literature. The conversations with the guests about their works are accompanied by their musical inspirations. The session from Leipzig will focus on writers from the anglophone African and afro-diasporic realms. The festival will continue with a session in Munich the following day and a 3-day event in Berlin in April.

28 January | 8 p.m. (CET)
Online via Youtube-Livestream

Finding: "The Myth of the Secular"

Our Senior Researcher Florian Zemmin found a radio series on CBC Radio Canada called "The Myth of the Secular". This 7-part series originally from the year 2012, presents theologians, anthropologists, sociologists and political philosophers talking about why the old map of the religious and the secular no longer fits the territory. And about how it might be redrawn.

All seven episodes can be listened to here.

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.