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Dear friends and colleagues,

After a little break, we are finally back next week with our colloquia. This time we are looking forward to the presentation and discussion with our Director Christoph Kleine.

Furthermore, we would like to officially say farewell and thank you to some of our Fellows and also welcome our new Fellows this month. We also have recommendations for a guest lecture and a conference for you.

Enjoy and have a good week!

Anja & Lucy

Next week’s Colloquium: Christoph Kleine on “Preparing the Field for Secularity in Medieval Japan”, 12 April

Next Wednesday, our director Christoph Kleine will give a presentation on his essay “Preparing the Field for Secularity in Medieval Japan”. In this article, he makes a strong case that the social, political, economic and ideological developments that accompanied the transition from the Heian (794–1185) to the Kamakura period (1185–1333), generated epistemic and social structures of a longue durée that remained permanently available as a resource for a Japanese form of secularity.

The article is part of the essay series “The Premodern World and the Secular”, edited by Rushain Abbasi from Stanford University. This series also includes contributions by our Senior Research Fellows Sita Steckel and Neguin Yavari, among others.

The colloquium will take place in a hybrid format (on-site and online). If you would like to join in person, please register for the colloquium via e-mail. In the Member Area you will find the relevant readings as well as information on the zoom connection data.

12 April | 9.15–11.45 am (CET)

Strohsack, Room 4.55 and online via zoom

Fellows at KFG: Welcome and Farewell

This month, we would like to welcome our new Senior Research Fellows Birgit Meyer, Daniel Witte and Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç to the KFG.

Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies at the Department of Religious Studies and Theology at Utrecht University, will stay with us for three months working on her project “Across the religion-secularity boundary: Unpacking a colonial missionary collection”.  

Daniel Witte joins our KFG team for the next six months and contributes with his research on “’Neutral zones’ as a third space between religion and non-religion”. He is lecturer at the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn as well as Executive Board Member of the German Sociological Association and speaker of its Sociological Theory Section.

Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç, TÜBİTAK Postdoctoral Researcher at the Asia-Africa Institute, History and Culture of the Middle East, University of Hamburg, has been part of the KFG since March already and will stay with us until the end of August working on her project “The Battle of Superstition: Alevis and the Construction of Islamic Orthodoxy in Secular Turkey”.

We are very happy to have you all with us and warmly welcome you to our team!

We would also like to say farewell and thank you to three of our Senior Research Fellows:

Uta Karstein, Research Fellow in Cultural Management and Sociology of the Cultural Field at the Institute for Cultural Studies at Leipzig University, worked with us for 6 months. She enriched our project with her work on “Coping with Autonomy: How Religion Dealt With the Emergence of an Autonomous Art Field in 19th Century Germany”.

Lori Beaman, Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, held the Leibniz Professorship at Leipzig University for the winter semester 2022/2023. Lori joined our KFG as an Associate Member during her stay in Leipzig and stayed with us for six months.

Klaus Buchenau, Professor of Southeast and East European History at Universität Regensburg, spent one semester from October to March with us working on his research project “Russian secularities through the lense of Christian-Muslim relations in the Volga region, 16th to 21st centuries”.

We would like to thank the three of you very much for your contributions and the good cooperation. You have been a great enrichment for the project!

Guest Lecture by Micha Brumlik: “Regina Jonas – Der Welt erste Rabbinerin – In Auschwitz ermordet“ (“Regina Jonas: The world's first female rabbi. Murdered in Auschwitz”), 27 April at Leipzig University

We would like to share with you the information on a guest lecture with Micha Brumlik, recommended by our colleague Yemima Hadad, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig University.

Micha Brumlik is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for General Educational Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, and since October 2013 he has been Senior Advisor at the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg. In his lecture, he will talk about “Regina Jonas: The world’s first female rabbi. Murdered in Auschwitz”.

27 April | 11.15 am (CET)

Leipzig University, Faculty of Theology, Beethovenstr. 25, Room 113

Hybrid Conference on “Religion and Economy in the Middle Ages”, 4–6 May, University of Münster

We would like to draw your attention to this conference on “Religion and Economy in the Middle Ages”, at which the working group on late medieval economic history in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster will discuss the relationship between religion and economy in a global perspective. Apart from papers on the Christian Middle Ages, there will be contributions on Islamic and Jewish contexts, as well as comparative studies on economic contacts in the interreligious sphere. Three thematic complexes constitute the focus of interest: the role of religious norms, the interdependence between religious discourse and economic activities, and the role of the economy in interreligious contacts.

You can register for the conference until 2 May via e-mail. It is possible to follow the conference via zoom.

4–6 May

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster AND Online

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.