Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati

daria.pezzoli-olgiati@uni-erfurt.de

Fellow (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)

Office hours

by arrangement

Visiting address

Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
C19 – Forschungsbau „Weltbeziehungen“
Max-Weber-Allee 3
99089 Erfurt

Mailing address

Universität Erfurt
Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt

Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati

Personal Information

Short biography

Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati studied Theology and the Study of Religion at the universities of Fribourg and Zurich. In 1996 she completed her doctoral degree with a dissertation on the Apocalypse of John and in 2002 her Habilitation in the Study of Religion at the University of Zurich. 2004–2010 she was appointed as a SNFS Professor for the Study of Religion at the University of Zurich, 2010-2016 as the director of the Centre for Religion, Economy and Politics (ZRWP), an interdisciplinary project of the universities of Basel, Fribourg, Lausanne, Lucerne, Zurich, und the Collegium Helveticum (ETHZ). Since 2016 she has held the chair for the Study and the History of Religion at the Faculty for Protestant Theology at LMU Munich.

Her research interests focus on media and religion with particular attention for visual communication and audio-visual media and their interaction with religion. Furthermore, she works on theories of place and space as well as gender in relation to religion in the past and present. These theoretical reflections are developed through case studies in the history of religion in Europe and the contemporary society.

Research Project

Utopia as a Challenging Imagination of the City Religion and Urbanity in The Handmaid’s Tale

Utopian ideas and imaginations recur in politics, fiction, and popular culture. Literature and film elaborate visions of utopian and/or dystopian societies that mirror, criticise, or magnify aspects of the contemporary world. Positive and negative forms of utopia can be interpreted as a productive work of fiction which develops a political and spatial reflection on human forms of coexistence. Utopia is an ambivalent experiment in which reality and imagination are merged in complicated and challenging, mutual relationships.

Strikingly, utopian narratives tend to focus on urban places. As a fictional imagination of human coexistence, utopian cities represent blueprints of culture. In the planned project, utopia and the city are analysed as interdependent phenomena that over centuries have adapted to different media and forms. The project focuses on the interweaving of utopia, religion and the city in the narrative universe initiated in 1985 by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood with the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which has developed into a cultural phenomenon since then.

Publications

List of Publications

A complete list of publications can be downloaded here.

Selected Books

  • Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/ Boris Previšić (Hg.), Grenzgänge. Religion und die Alpen, mit Fotos von Marco Volken, Zürich: Pano 2024.
  • Knauss, Stefanie/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Religion in Representations of Europe, Shared and Contested Practices, Media and Religion 8, Nomos: Baden-Baden 2023, doi: doi.org/10.5771/9783748914501
  • Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina/Jeffers, Ann/ Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (Hg.), Handbuch Gender und Religion, 2., überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, UTB Theologie, Religion 3062, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2021.
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina (Hg.), Religion, Medien und die Corona-Pandemie. Paradoxien einer Krise, Medien und Religion 6, Baden-Baden: Nomos 2021, print und open access: doi.org/10.5771/9783748922216
  • Wyller, Trygve/Knauss, Stefanie/Heimbrock, Hans-Günter/Sander, Hans-Joachim/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/Danani, Carla, Religion and Difference. Contested Contemporary Issues, Research in Contemporary Religion 28, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2020.
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Religion in der Kultur erforschen. Ein Essay, Zürich: Pano 2019.
  • Fritz, Natalie/Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina/Knauss, Stefanie/Mäder, Marie-Therese/ Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Sichtbare Religion. Eine Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft, De Gruyter Studium, Berlin: De Gruyter 2018.

Journal Issues

  • Fritz, Natalie / Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Fiction, Religion and Politics in The Handmaid’s Tale, Journal for Religion, Film and Media 10, 1, 2024 (forthcoming)
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/Wessely, Christian (eds.), Materiality of Writing. Reconsidering Religious Texts, Journal for Religion, Film and Media 7, 1, 2021, https://jrfm.eu/index.php/ojs_jrfm/issue/view/13/13
  • Knauss, Stefanie/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), The Normative Power of Images, Journal of Gender & Religion 5, 1, 2015, https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/5/1/rag.5.issue-1.xml

Articles

  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/Fritz, Natalie, «Are there any questions?» Fiction, Religion and Politics in The Handmaid’s Tale, Fritz, Natalie/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Fiction, Religion and Politics, in: The Handmaid’s Tale, Journal for Religion, Film and Media 10, 1, 2024 (forthcoming).
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Graffiti della pandemia. La religione visibile nello spazio pubblico, in: Nardella, Carlo (a cura di), Religioni dappertutto. Simboli, immagini, sconfinamenti , Roma: Carocci 2024, 127–141.
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria/Knauss, Stefanie, Introduction, Religion in Representations of Europe, in: Knauss, Stefanie/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Religion in Representations of Europe. Shared and Contested Practices, Religion and Media 8, Nomos: Baden-Baden 2023, 11–33, doi: doi.org/10.5771/9783748914501
  • Danani, Carla/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Public Memory under Construction. Exploring Religion in the House of European History in Brussel, in: Knauss, Stefanie/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Religion in Representations of Europe. Shared and Contested Practices, Religion and Media 8, Nomos: Baden-Baden 2023, 251– 288, doi: doi.org/10.5771/9783748914501
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Theories of Religion Easily Introduced with A Life in a Tin (Una vita in scatola, Bruno Bozzetto, IT 1967, 6’), Journal for Religion, Film and Media 8, 1, 2022, 17–32, doi: 10.25364/05.8:2022.2.2
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, The Handmaid’s Tale. Religion und Gender künstlerisch verdichtet, in: Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina/Jeffers, Ann/Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (Hg.), Handbuch Gender und Religion, 2. überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, UTB 3062, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2021, 533–561.
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Performing Difference in Front of Death. Material, Bodily and Spatial Practices, in: Mäder, Marie-Therese/Scolari, Baldassare/Saviello, Alberto (eds.), Highgate Cemetery. Images in Past and Present, Religion and Media 1, Baden-Baden: Nomos 2020, 53–76, https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783845294520/highgate-cemetery
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Interdisziplinarität in der Religionsforschung. Zur Verbindung von disziplinärer Zugehörigkeit und wissenschaftlicher Vielfalt, in: Haußmann, Annette/Schleicher, Niklas (Hg.), Aktuelle Theologie. Zur Relevanz theologischer Forschung, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2021, 15–29.
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, People on the Move. Religion, Film and Migration, CrossCurrents 70, 3, 2020, 263–275, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cros.12436
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria, Sichtbare Religion und ihre epistemologischen Herausforderungen, in: Hock, Klaus (Hg.), Wissen um Religion: Erkenntnis – Interesse. Epistemologie und Episteme in Religionswissenschaft und Interkultureller Theologie, Veröffentlichung der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie 64, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2020, 253–275.

Links

Chair for the History and the Study of Religion at LMU Munich

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