Performing Religion in the City - Urban Spaces, Interactions and Media

Organisation:

Dr Elisabeth Begemann, Dr Martin Christ, Dr Isabella Schwaderer

About the event

The concept of "Performing Religion in the City – Urban Spaces, Interactions and Media" refers to the manner in which religious practices and expressions occur and are experienced in urban environments. Erfurt will serve as a starting point for this exploration. This approach examines the interaction between religion and urbanity and the role that urban spaces play in shaping religious identities and communities through the material and digital spaces. We argue for the importance of a performance-oriented approach by suggesting that a performative, rather than normative, conception of religion is more appropriate, given that it is shaped through interactions in the public sphere. 

In this international interdisciplinary summer school, you will work with leading specialists dealing with textual, material, and embodied sources of performed urban religion. You will be equipped to develop your own approach to the study of performative religiosity in the public sphere. The instructors will give master classes from their own fields of research (e.g. history, religious studies, art, liturgy, digital religion, media studies, and others), in an integrated program that takes seriously the challenge of how to study “performed urban spaces” of peoples past and present. Excursions in religious and historical spaces in the city of Erfurt and its surroundings complete a full-immersion experience.