Call for papers: Conference of the International Research Training Group “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”

Religion and Transnational Religious Discourses: Globality Construction and Resistance
Rome, June 21-22, 2018

Venue: German Historical Institute Rome, Via Aurelia Antica, 391

The International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe” is based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. Cooperation partners are the Collegium Carolinum in Munich and the German Historical Institute in Rome.

The IRTG aims to contribute in a fundamental, both theoretically and methodologically innovative way to the analysis of the relationship between religion and modernity in Europe. Its research projects are interdisciplinary and international. Through joint methodology seminars and summer schools, it offers a study program that is carried out in Czech-German-Polish cooperation.

The conference deals with the ambivalent relationship between religion and globalization. The geographical distribution of religious communities has been used time and again to define supposedly immovable boundaries of civilization. Particular identities, such as local or national affiliations, are often backed by religious arguments and practices. At the same time, religion is one of the most important driving forces of transnational integration. Religion often claims universal validity and cross-border relationships are rather the rule than the exemption for religious communities. A religion contained within the boundaries of a single national state is an exception.

The conference poses the question of how religions and religious thinkers have responded to phenomena of globalization since the 19th century and how they have themselves been involved in the construction of transnational and global self-understanding. It focuses equally on the analysis of deliberate defense against cross-border influences, justified by a territorialized claim to validity of a particular “native” religious community, on the analysis of the area of tension between particularity and universality and the analysis of globalization strategies of religion, in confessional as well as in ecumenical contexts.

  • Organizers:
  • Martin Baumeister, Director of the German Historical Institute in Rome\
  • Martin Schulze Wessel, Speaker of the IRTG “Religious cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”\
  • Martina Niedhammer, Historical Seminar of LMU Munich

Travel expenses will be refunded. Conference languages are German and English.

Interested scholars are invited to send an exposé of 1-2 pages in PDF format to the following address by 28 February 2018: rene.kuepper@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

https://www.igk-religioese-kulturen.uni-muenchen.de
https://dhi-roma.it