Dr. Isabella Schwaderer

About

Isabella Schwaderer is a research assistant in Religious Studies. She was previously a lecturer at the universities of Würzburg, Erfurt and Jena and held a post at the University of Jena. She studied Greek and Latin Philology and Philosophy in Würzburg, Thessaloniki and Padova. She received her MA in Ancient Greek from the University of Würzburg and her PhD in Religious Studies (Orthodox Christianity) from the University of Erfurt.
Her teaching and research interests cross between history, anthropology and aesthetics. In her study on the work of Stelios Ramfos (2018) she examines Greek Orthodoxy as resistance against, but also as a tool for Europeanization in Greece. The collective volume Annäherungen an das Unaussprechliche (2020) deals with the tangible and experiential side of religion in a diachronic manner with a focus on the connection of Germany and South Asia, which she pushes further in her current research project on the relationships between Religion, Dance and Race in Nazi Germany. This study is based on the press coverage of the performances of the Indian dance and music group Menaka in Germany from 1936-38. There she analyzes the discourse on topics surrounding India as a space where German cultural origins are negotiated as well as aspects of racist (voelkish) art. These press articles serve to reconstruct, on a broader scale, a panorama of ideas of India where colonial stereotypes intertwine with the search for a national and religious resurgence on racist parameters.
She has also published in the field of religion and gender, religious interactions in the Mediterranean area, and Islam in Algeria. With her students, she is continually exploring new facets of (in-) visible religion in their everyday surrounding. The outcomes will be an alternative audio city guide of religious spaces and places in Erfurt as a part of Un-sichtbar. Network for Knowledge Transfer in Religious Studies.