Religious Matters

A new blog, on the relation between humans and animals, by Jing-Yi Magraw.
"As Hodder notes, “we are only human through things.” Understanding the human-animal dependency through the lens of religion offers us a glimpse into how embedded these ‘things’ (in this case, animals) are in our existence." Read on here (BM):

The Entrapment of the Relationship between Humans and Domesticated Animals Jing-Yi Magraw

PhD position Faculty Religion and Theology - >Werken bij VU Are you an enthusiastic and ambitious researcher with a (research) master's degree in Theology or Religious Studies? Are you interested in doing PhD research in an interdisciplinary context on a subject that you consider important to the field? Then apply...

Kauthar Khamis, junior research in our Religious Matters project, just published her article about the turn to Niqab as a measure against Covid in the journal Entangled Religions. Click here to read the piece. It's open access. (BM)

“Hijab and Niqab: A cross-religious covid-19 safety measure in Madina Zongo”: New Open Access Article by Kauthar Khamis The open access article ‘Hijab and Niqab: A cross-religious covid-19 safety measure in Madina Zongo’ written by Kauthar Khamis has just been published in Entangled Religions. Click here to download the open access article.

Margreet van Es about going out for dinner in Rotterdam during Ramadan (in Dutch):

Uit eten tijdens de ramadan - Utrecht Religie Forum Wat doe je als je moslim bent, tijdens de vastenmaand ramadan de hele dag hebt gevast en geen zin hebt om ’s avonds zelf te koken voor de iftar (het breken van de vasten bij zonsondergang)? Of als je de vasten een keertje met vrienden wil verbreken, in plaats van thuis met je familie? Juist,...

Link naar de opname van mijn deelname aan het programma Over religie en zingeving in de toekomst, met de Futuristen en Studium Generale, in Tivoli Vreedenburg.

https://sg.uu.nl/video/2022/04/over-religie-en-zingeving-de-toekomst

Over religie en zingeving in de toekomst In onzekere tijden is de hang naar zingeving groot. Zijn religie en spiritualiteit bezig aan een opleving? Met religiewetenschapper prof. Birgit Meyer.

Over religie en zingeving in de toekomst

De Futuristen
In onzekere tijden is de hang naar zingeving groot. Zijn religie en spiritualiteit bezig aan een opleving? Met religiewetenschapper prof. Birgit Meyer.
Socioloog Max Weber sprak aan het begin van de vorige eeuw over de onttovering van de wereld. Het geloof in God zou plaatsmaken voor het geloof in de ratio en technologie. Maar honderd jaar later is het verlangen naar religie en spiritualiteit nog steeds groot. Waar komt die behoefte vandaan? Kunnen we de wereld opnieuw betoveren? Met religiewetenschapper prof. Birgit Meyer (UU).

In samenwerking met het Nieuw Utrechts Toneel & Descartes Centre (UU).

https://www.tivolivredenburg.nl/agenda/wat-geloven-we-in-de-toekomst-13-04-2022/

ook via de life stream

Wat geloven we in de toekomst? - TivoliVredenburg De Futuristen: Wat geloven we in de toekomst? op 21 februari 2022 in Pandora in TivoliVredenburg. Een programma van Studium Generale van de Universiteit Utrecht.

The article “Can Muslims Drink? Rumi Vodka, Persianate Ideals, and the Anthropology of Islam,” by Pooyan Tamimi Arab, has just been published in Comparative Studies in Society and History. It is available open-access and can be viewed with the supplementary materials on the journal's webpage.

Abstract:

Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (2016) challenges Islamic Studies scholars, (art) historians, and anthropologists to reconsider theoretical frameworks underpinning historical and ethnographic research. This article addresses Ahmed’s concerns that studies of Islam often conceptually privilege orthodoxy, by including drinking and intoxication as worthy of close attention in examining the history and the anthropology of Islam. The case of Wine Shop the Philosopher, run by a former Afghan refugee in The Hague and Amsterdam, is presented after establishing the comparative and interdisciplinary relevance of alcohol consumption in studies of Islam and Muslims. Ahmed’s conceptual framework is used and assessed in comparison with the wine shops’ contemporary pluralist reality by exploring the idealized boundaries of Persianate culture and Islam in dialogues between Persian-speaking interlocutors. It is argued that alcoholic drinks lend themselves to competing gastro-nationalisms and prompt ethnolinguistic tensions between and within groups with Turkish, Moroccan, Iranian, and Afghan backgrounds in the Netherlands. The focus on diverse, coexisting and clashing drink regimes, in conclusion, allows us to deconstruct dichotomies between sober Muslims and European drinkers, African and Asian believers and European unbelievers, and refugees and citizens.

Can Muslims Drink? New open-access article by Pooyan Tamimi Arab The article “Can Muslims Drink? Rumi Vodka, Persianate Ideals, and the Anthropology of Islam,” by Pooyan Tamimi Arab, has just been published in Comparative Studies in Society and History. It is available open-access and can be viewed with the supplementary materials.

Boeddhabeelden: De nieuwe engelen? - Utrecht Religie Forum Ken jij iemand met een boeddhabeeld? Het zou wel moeten, althans volgens een onderzoekje dat het Tropenmuseum Amsterdam een paar jaar terug liet uitvoeren. Zij lieten duizend mensen bellen en het bleek dat een derde van hen een boeddhabeeld had. Soms staat hij in de tuin; dan vervangt het de tuinkab...

Rumi en de nacht - Utrecht Religie Forum Voor veel mensen is maart een tijd van hoop en nieuw leven. De dagen worden langer en de nachten worden korter. De nacht speelt echter een belangrijke rol in de werken van islamitische mystici, onder wie de dertiende-eeuwse Perzische dichter Jalal al-Din Rumi (1307-1373). Mystici als hij beminden Go...

26 april, 15.00-16.30, UCU.

CHIP lecture Spring 2022 Containing the Past: How to Unpack Missionary Colonial Collections by Birgit Meyer

Celebrating Recent Work by Maria José de Abreu | Event The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil by: Maria José de Abreu In The Charismatic Gymnasium Maria José de Abreu examines how Charismatic Catholicism in contemporary Brazil produces a new form of total power through a concatenation of the…

Here is a link to the keynotes held by Kim Knott, Robert Orsi and José Casanova at the conference Sacred Places in an Age of Secularization, at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in December 2021. Much resonance with the themes addressed by our Religious Matters in an Entangled World program. (BM)

"How can sacred places help fight the climate change? What is more sacred: a gateway to the afterlife, or a domestic threshold? What attracts Japanese tourists to a Catholic Church in Barcelona? And what is the significance of a sacred place in an age of secularization?

In December 2020 the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute held an online international research workshop on the subject of sacred places in a post-secular and global world. The workshop convened over forty researchers from ten different countries for rich and diverse discussions regarding the role sacred places, and and the concept of sanctity in general, play in today's world. The main lectures were delivered by three of the leading scholars of religion in the world today: Prof. Robert Orsi, Prof. Kim Knott and Prof. José Casanova."

Sacred places in an age of secularization - The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute How can sacred places help fight the climate crisis? What is more sacred: a gate to the world to come or a domestic threshold?

Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies (1.0 FTE) The Faculty of Humanities is looking for an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. Interested? Then please read and apply!

Come visit our online Open Day on Friday 11 February and talk with teachers, students and alumni!
Are you interested in the vibrant world of religions? Do you want to understand why religious images, buildings, clothes, and everyday practices often provoke fierce debates or even violent conflicts? Do you want to be able to contribute to analyses of the interplay between religion and politics in the context of globalization and migration?
This is what we study together in our programme! Our Research Master is a challenging, research-oriented programme that prepares you for participation in current debates in the international community of scholars of religion, and to make your own contributions to the field.
Students participate actively in research projects of senior scholars and contribute to the academic community at the department, e.g. in colloquia, conferences and guest lectures by international scholars.
The programme combines an advanced grounding in the central themes and theories of the study of religion, with ample opportunity for specialisation. You can choose and develop your specific expertise in relation to one of our key research areas:
* Religious texts and interpretative practices: This research area focuses on the study of religious traditions from the perspective of sacred texts: their interpretation and the religious rituals and practices associated with them, and discussions on the authority of religious texts.
* Materiality and corporeality of lived religion: This area focuses on the study of the use of the body and the senses in religious practices, such as praying, dancing, fighting, and fasting, and the function of objects within the context of religion, such as images, buildings, food, clothing, money, movies, and digital media.
* Religious diversity in contexts of globalization and migration: This research area focuses on the role of religion in public controversies and political developments concerning, for instance, gender equality, sociocultural transformation, political and religious fundamentalism, and conflict resolution.
It is a two-years programme, which is fully taught in English. Our students enter the programme with a variety of educational backgrounds, including, e.g., Anthropology, Gender Studies, History, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Philosophy, Religious Studies.

Master’s Open Day The next Master's Open Day will take place on Friday 11 February from 12.30 to 18.30 (local time). More information can be found on this webpage. Click on the button below to register. 

Just out: a new thematic thread Heritage out of Control on Allegra lab, Anthropology for Radical Optimism, edited by Çiçek Ilengiz, Serawit B. Debele and Annika Kirbis. (also with a piece by Birgit Meyer)

New Special Issue “Heritage out of Control” Allegra lab, Anthropology for Radical Optimism, just published the thematic thread Heritage out of Control. This online special issue is based on a conference with the same title held in May (see here) and has been edited by Çiçek Ilengiz, Serawit B. Debele and Annika Kirbis

Interview with Birgit Meyer on “Sacred Waste” After her lecture “Religion and/as Cultural Heritage. Dealing with sacred waste in Ghana and the Netherlands” at the MARKK, Hamburg, on 19 January (see here), Birgit Meyer was interviewed by Mechthild Klein for the Deutschlandfunk (in German):

Ernst van den Hemel over de betekenis van de bezwering "YHWH-M'Kaddesh" door demonstranten tegen de Corona maatregelen. (BM)

TikTok aan de haal met uitspraak coronademonstrant Een opvallende uitspraak van coronademonstrant Karin Maria gaat momenteel viraal op TikTok. Maar wat betekent die uitspraak nou eigenlijk?

From the Corona-Blog of the Forum for Transregional Studies.

Gods and Outcasts: Ambivalent Attitudes towards Health Workers in India during the Coronavirus Pandemic By Gautam Liu. The COVID-19 pandemic in India generated a strange phenomenon in how health workers were perceived. On the one hand officials were not tired in proclaiming doctors and nurses as gods, on the other hand health workers were ostracized by large parts of the general population.

Ernst van den Hemel looked at many Christmas movies (links provided) and other materials, and offers an illuminating analysis of the "connection between the popularized narrative of Christmas as we see it in Christmas movies and contemporary polarization as it unfolds during this holiday season." An insightful longread befitting the season.

"In contemporary globalized media-culture, most of us have received the Christmas narrative in some shape or form. Whether it is through Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, countless Hollywood movies, children’s cartoons or songs, Christmas is not just the time to be merry, it is also a time in which people are reminded of the importance to be concerned about Christmas, to convert people to the true spirit of Christmas or to enjoy stories in which enemies of Christmas get their deserved comeuppance." Read on here:

Tis the Season to be Outraged: Scripting the Senses in the War on Christmas Ernst van den Hemel

Birgit Meyer on the Utrecht Religie Forum about Corona and the crisis of modern personhood (in Dutch).

Corona en de crisis van de moderne mens - Utrecht Religie Forum Het hoort bij het wezen van mensen dat ze de wereld willen begrijpen en daar zin aan willen ontlenen. Hierbij spelen verhalen een centrale rol. Mensen ontlenen houvast aan de verhalen die ze maken en doorgeven om zichzelf en hun plaats in de wereld te begrijpen. Deze verhalen zijn onderdeel van een....

The Centre for Religious Studies (CERES) at the Ruhr-University Bochum, received an archive from the White Fathers. By way of sighting the materials it contains, CERES started the project of Unboxing. So far, there are three episodes, which you can watch by following the link below (episode 3 features Birgit Meyer). (BM).

“White Fathers”: Unboxing archival material at the Rühr-Universität Bochum Through a donation, the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum received archival materials and objects from the Cologne-based Africa missionaries “White Fathers”. In a special form of the popular unboxing videos, scholars open archive boxes and offer initial researc...

From the NOSTER side.

Religion, Secularization, Heritage: an Interview with Marian Burchardt Birgit Meyer has interviewed professor dr. Marian Burchardt (Leipzig University) about his academic trajectory, ideas and plans. Past November, dr. Burchardt was a visiting lecturer at the bi-annual conference of the NGG (the Dutch Religious Studies Association), where he gave a masterclass for NOST...

Religious Studies Research Master Religious Studies at Utrecht University. Research-based training in the multidisciplinary study of religion.

Congrats to Pooyan Tamimi Arab for being elected to the Young Academy!

Religiewetenschapper Pooyan Tamimi Arab treedt toe tot De Jonge Akademie Arab is een van de tien nieuwe leden van De Jonge Akademie (KNAW). Hij gaat zich inzetten voor diversiteit, samenwerking en wetenschappelijke waarden.

Roos Dorsman introduces her PhD thesis The New Orleans Voodooscape: Ethnography of Contemporary Voodoo Traditions of New Orleans, Louisiana. "The more time I spent in New Orleans, the more I realized that there was no such thing as an opposition between the ‘tourist trap’ and the ‘real deal’, but rather a landscape of domains of voodoo that partly overlap and are even entangled. To do justice to the full complexity of voodoo in New Orleans, I coined the term voodooscape." Read more below:

The New Orleans Voodooscape: Ethnography of Contemporary Voodoo Traditions of New Orleans, Louisiana Roos Dorsman

Short Essay by Christoph Baumgartner, on Freedom and ethics, spelling out implications for our current panndemic moment (in Dutch).

Moraal als prijs van de vrijheid in een veranderende wereld - Utrecht Religie Forum Een mens is een kwetsbaar wezen. Dit inzicht is natuurlijk allesbehalve nieuw. Door de eeuwen heen hebben mensen verschillende instrumenten en instituties ontwikkeld om met deze kwetsbaarheid om te gaan. Religie kan het bijvoorbeeld mogelijk maken om om te kunnen gaan met tragische gebeurtenissen di...

New article by Erik Meinema in the Journal of Religion in Africa. Congrats! (BM)

Is Giriama Traditionalism a Religion? New Open Access-Article by Erik Meinema The open-access article ‘Is Giriama Traditionalism a Religion? Negotiating Indigenous African Religiosity in ‘Interfaith’ Cooperation in Coastal Kenya’ written by Erik Meinema has just been published by Brill in the Journal of Religion in Africa. Click here to download the open-access articl...

New in our Dossier Corona: Oliver Hidalgo (Department of Political Science, University of Muenster) and Alexander Yendell (Research Institute Social Cohesion at Leipzig University) report about their research on the role of religious actors in the Covid-19 pandemic. "The Covid-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst rather than being a cause for many social and political problems we were able to observe during the past eighteen months. The same is the case with regard to religious responses to the pandemic. Wherever religious identities have been instrumentalized in conflict situations before Corona, this was largely confirmed during the crisis." (BM)

The Key Role of Religious Communities in the Covid-19 Pandemic Oliver Hidalgo (Department of Political Science, University of Muenster) and Alexander Yendell (Research Institute Social Cohesion at Leipzig University)

"De Koran zegt" en "de islam schrijft voor" - een modern fenomeen - Utrecht Religie Forum De transformatie van het islamitisch zelfbeeld in de moderne periode en vervolgens de betekenis van het concept “islam” blijven vele historici en religiewetenschappers nog steeds bezighouden. Het contrast tussen de premoderne islam en de islam in zijn huidige vorm is soms zo frappant dat het ons...

One of the first on site events since ages!!!!

NGG Conference 2021 on “Religion and Heritage” set to take place on site in Amsterdam (3-5 November) The bi-annual conference of the Dutch Religious Studies Association (NGG) will take place on site in Amsterdam (Meertens Institute, University of Amsterdam) between 3 and 5 November 2021.

Ik werd door Marius Koelink geinterviewd voor Volzin.

Interview met Birgit Meyer in Volzin Religie staat in Nederland vaak gelijk aan ‘geloof’. Maar klopt het eigenlijk wel om religie als iets puur innerlijks en mentaals te zien – als ‘geloven’? Nee, vindt Birgit Meyer, hoogleraar Religiewetenschappen aan de Universiteit Utrecht en prominent wetenschapper in het veld van materi....

Brandon Sward and Connie Gagliardi interviewed me for the Entangled Worlds Project (Toronto), and the resulting text is placed alongside other interviews with esteemed colleagues. The themes addressed on this site resonate with our Religious Matters in an Entangled World project.

Interview with Birgit Meyer on the “Entangled Worlds” website The “Entangled Worlds Project“, an interdisciplinary research initiative hosted by the University of Toronto, has recently published an interview with Birgit Meyer. The interview was conducted by Brandon Sward and Connie Gagliardi. Click here to read it.

Arash Ghajarjazi is defending his dissertation on the Dār al-Funūn on October 8th. You are welcome to attend!

PhD defence Arash Ghajarjazi: Techniques of the senses Arash Ghajarjazi defends his dissertation on the religious sphere and the modern technical environment of Iran in the nineteenth century.

An essay by Birgit Meyer in the section on the boasblogs, Cologne.

Legba-figures and dzokawo: unpacking a missionary collection from the Übersee-Museum Bremen In this essay on the “Decolonizing Collections – Networking Towards Relationality”-blog on the Boas-blogs forum (see here), Birgit Meyer sketches her ideas about a collaborative study of a missionary collection of legba-figures (translated as “idols”) and dzokawo (translated as “charms.....

Just opened! An important exhibition in the Stedelijk that situates Nolde and Kirchner and their art works in the context of (German) colonialism.

https://www.stedelijk.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/kirchner-en-nolde-expressionisme-kolonialisme

On the site below you find a very good introduction to the exhibition with Beatrice von Borman, Wayne Modest and Wonu Weys. watch and go! :-)

KIRCHNER EN NOLDE: EXPRESSIONISME. KOLONIALISME Het werk van Ernst Ludwig Kirchner en Emil Nolde staat bekend om de knallende kleuren en spontane penseelstreken waarmee zij mensen, landschappen en objecten op onconventionele wijze neerzetten. Hoe hangt de uitgesproken beeldtaal van deze twee expressionisten samen met het kolonialisme? In deze gro...