A recipient of a scholarship awarded to gifted individuals by the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts, Patrizia Nanz studied philosophy at Munich School of Philosophy and history and literary criticism as well as philosophy at universities in Munich, Milan and Frankfurt Rhine-Main between and From Nanz worked for several years as an editor on science and non-fiction publications for German publishing house S. Fischer Verlag and Milan-based publishers Feltrinelli.
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Following a sabbatical at McGill University, where she attended lectures by Charles Taylor, Nanz commenced her doctoral studies in political science at the European University Institute in Florence] in She completed her doctoral degree with a thesis, published in , on the European public sphere examiners: Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the project sought to develop innovative approaches that would make the policy process and institutional settings of the health-care system more responsive to the needs of migrants.
Nanz was the executive leader of the research project Fundamental Rights in the European Union from to The project was funded by the European Union and conducted within the framework of the European research network Resources, Rights and Capabilities: In Patrizia Nanz co-founded the participedia wiki [6] — a global database for democratic innovations. The project studied the development, implementation, and evaluation of dialogue-based processes for citizen participation as solutions for conflict resolution and de-escalation in connection with energy infrastructure projects.
Contents Interview patrizia nanz kritik an beteiligungskultur Prof patrizia nanz keynote speech part 1 Education and early career Research Publications Selection References Her main areas of research are public participation and technology assessment climate change, biotechnology, energy transition, final storage of nuclear waste , democratic theory, transnational governance and the political project of Europe. Prof patrizia nanz keynote speech part 1. Education and early career A recipient of a scholarship awarded to gifted individuals by the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts, Patrizia Nanz studied philosophy at Munich School of Philosophy and history and literary criticism as well as philosophy at universities in Munich, Milan and Frankfurt Rhine-Main between and Publications Selection Monographies Die Konsultative.
La partecipazione dei cittadini: The depositio ad sanctos in late antiquity Katharina Waldner Between the second and fifth centuries AD the way to relate the realm of the dead to the world of the living dramatically changed Brown The process begins with martyrdom accounts which speak of the Christian practice of collecting the gruesomely mutilated bodies and bones of their fellow Christians not only to bury them but also to gather at their burial place to celebrate their birthdays regularly Martyrium Polycarpi, second or early third century. From in the third century onwards we find the earliest archaeological remains of the new ways in which the Christians communicated with their dead, especially with real or invented martyrs, which would later become the most important category of saints.
The Roman Basilica S. Sebastiano was built over an early Christian cult place, a kind of court called triklia by archaeologists , which was in turn built on burial places and surrounded by a variety of graves. Numerous graffiti left by visitors of the site inform us that cultic meals, refrigeria, on behalf of the apostles Peter and Paul Diefenbach were held here; most of the graffiti ask the saints to intercede on behalf of the writer or to help them in this life or the hereafter. Diefenbach convincingly argues that refrigerium not only meant a refreshing meal or drink but at the same time also denoted the place where the martyrs dwelt after their deaths.
As refrigerare in martyr acts also meant to be together and refresh and comfort each other especially in jail but also in the hereafter reached by martyrdom it is obvious that a lively exchange and communication between the dead martyrs and their fellow Christians was imagined, prolonging their being together during their lifetime and especially during their hardship in jail. Diefenbach argues that it was exactly the quality of this relationship that made the difference between pagan and Christian burial habits and attitudes towards death in general.
During the fourth and fifth centuries these practices developed further into the definitive cult of relics and the depositio ad sanctos. The project will focus on this obviously highly resonating horizontal as well as vertical relationship between the living Christians and the dead martyrs. In intensive comparative collaboration with the project on contemporary late modern engagement with death and dying and dead bodies by Stephan Moebius it will ask how exactly the relationship between the living and the dead as well as between the dead bodies and their spatial environment were imagined and performed ritually.
One of the most important observations will be that the dead bodies also figured as a kind of medium to contact God and the hereafter, a realm beyond earth-bound space and time. It is thus no wonder that these kinds of relationships were intensively sought-after as resources not only for individual well-being but also for religious authority.
The PhD project will analyse this discourse by re-reading in a relational perspective the famous debates about the despositio ad sanctos and the cult of relics in the fourth and fifth centuries by Augustine De cura pro mortibus gerenda and the last book of De civitate dei , Jerome Contra Vigilantium and Paulinus of Nola who withdrew after a political career to live an ascetic life near the shrine of the martyr Felix of.
In the case of Paulinus of Nola the aim will be to reconstruct how an individual uses his relationship to a saint to perform this relationship to himself by producing poetry about his saint and writing letters to fellow intellectual Christians Kleinschmidt ; Mratschek ; cf. The project will be able to substantially sharpen its theoretical terminology by collaborating with Stephan Moebius Death and Burial Ritual in Modernity.
Ausonius, Paulinus von Nola und Paulinus von Pella.
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Kommunikation zwischen christlichen Intellektuellen. It defines mystery cults as a genre of ritual which is particularly defined by the fact that it uses the very person mind and body of the participants as a medium to establish a long-term vertical relationship with a special divinity. It will thus study anew the evidence for selected mystery cults and in doing so it will concentrate on the bodily dimensions of the ritual and the related discourse thus further developing types of transcendent as well as material diagonal self world relationships.
Inspired by the basic assumption of the research group that rituals are to be seen as ways in which human beings build up and organise their relations to the world different genres of ritual can be described based on the ways in which they achieve this function. The most basic function of all ancient rituals was, of course, to form the relationship between human beings and gods, as well as to orchestrate the manifold relationships between the participants.
Each ritual thus situates its participants in a complicated network Eidinow ; in most cases there are mythological stories narrating the complex and ambivalent positions that human beings and gods held in these networks. In this perspective, the ritual genre of telete can be described as a type of ritual whose aim is to produce a firm and advantageous, life-long relationship between the participant and a certain god that extended beyond death.
The telete was distinct from almost all other types of ritual in the way it used the physical person mind and body as a medium to achieve this ritual goal. Most often, there is a ritual structure consisting of bodily purification, physical ordeal or at least a kind of mentally disturbing experience followed by a concluding feast of joy. This structure might be described in terms of vertical and diagonal resonance dimensions.
In the horizontal dimension one important feature is particularly prominent: In the introspective dimension, teletai turn out to be most interesting: The PhD project starts from the introspective dimension. Its main task will be to explore in detail how by physically performing the ritual of telete different individuals and groups achieved the transformations of their position described above in the complex network of their relationships and how this affected their relationship to themselves and to their bodies.
In doing so it will start from and concentrate in detail on the ritual use of the body movement, eating, drinking, clothing etc. The study of ritual might be combined with an analysis of the related mythological narratives. Because by far not all phenomena called teletai are attested in easily available and extant sources, the PhD candidate will have to choose a restricted number of cases according to his or her expertise. This task is made easier by the recent study by Bremmer The following two selections are suggested there are other possibilities: Eleusis and the Bacchic Mysteries: The mysteries of Eleusis are extremely well documented Parker , Bremmer ; nevertheless, the evidence has never been studied from the perspective of resonance theory.
The first step will be to concentrate on the physical and bodily dimensions of the ritual: In this case the dimension of space the archaeologically well documented sanctuary, its connection to Athens and things e. Of interest will be not only the comparison with the Eleusinian prototype, but also the phenomenon that with the so-called Orphics we have evidence of a small group of people who tried to preserve the bodily and ritual dimensions of the telete fasting, white clothes, nearness to a god in their daily lives and especially in the moments of their deaths so called gold leaves as grave goods for initiates Imperial Epoch: Initiation in Pausanias and Apuleius.
In the imperial epoch, the entrepreneur type of mysteries increased in popularity. The telete is now often used as part of the ritual programme of Dionysiac clubs Jaccottet and also inserted in the Egyptian cult of Isis as well as in the newly invented cult of Mithras. The still existing polis-related Greek mysteries are described by second century writer Pausanias. This PhD project will start with the mysteries of Ananda a town in Messene described by Pausanias , and also extensively documented by a large inscription Sacred Law, Gawlinski dated to the first century AD.
The inscription provides a mass of detailed information about the bodily dimension of the ritual as well as about the things used in it and the performed relationships of the participants. In contrast to this group- and polis-centred representation of the teletai connected with a political aetiological story about its foundation , the second example will be a highly individual-centred narrative about the initiation into the Isis cults by Lucius, the protagonist of Apuleius famous novel.
Explorations of Ritual Indeterminacy, in: A Model for Ancient Greek Religion, in: Ritual Texts for the Afterlife. How Social Formations Emerge. Becoming Resonant and Becoming Mute 1 The creation of holy sites and early pilgrimage Kai Brodersen The author of this thesis will explore texts which have so far been studied only separately: On the one side, the book on the Lives of the Prophets, which is part of the body of inter-testamentary Jewish literature between the Old and the New Testament Schwemer , has long been seen as connected to the identification, or indeed creation, of graves of the prophets in the Holy Land, most of which are attested both archaeologically and in the literature of the first centuries AD.
On the other side, there is a body of texts which provide evidence for early Judaeo-Christian pilgrimage practices, beginning with the so-called Pilgrim of Bordeaux, a text which presents a list of stations as having been visited by this traveller in the fourth century.
These sites are drawn both from classical mythology and history and from the Old and, less frequently, from the New Testament. By studying the inter-testamentary texts, notably the Lives of the Prophets, together with the accounts of the early pilgrims, the author of the thesis will be able to improve our understanding of the relationship of sites, both traditional and recently found, created or even invented ones, with the rise of pilgrimage as a practice of establishing an extraordinary axis of resonance.
The main focus for the thesis will be to study these texts thus providing, as it were, a prequel for the project on solely Christian pilgrimage in the Byzantine world of the RGZM in Mainz by applying the guiding questions of the research group: Why are they evidence for resonance with a contemporary readership? How do they allow us to understand the world of this readership, which notably includes women?
What relationships between the sites and the readers are envisaged? Where is seeing, touching, venerating, or celebrating a religious service required? Where do traditions, both old and invented, and where do shapes, appearances or characteristics of the sites invite specific ways of dealing with them? Which are the cultural practices the texts connect to?
By combining the established methods of classics and ancient history with the theories at the core of the group's mission, and in applying them to a research project based on transmitted historical. She or he will be able to make an innovative contribution both to the study of sites in the Holy Land, and to our understanding of early pilgrimage.
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The author of the thesis will find support by liaising with Christoph Heil's and Markus Vinzent's, as well as with Peter Scherrer's projects. On other aspects, there will be useful interaction with Stephan Moebius and, regarding aspects of gender, Irmtraud Fischer s projects. Key Themes in Ancient History. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Some reflections on Egeria and her circle", in: Why did certain axes of resonance work for hundreds of years while others did not? Using criteria of intersectionality this project not only develops the concept of resonance but discusses the factors of power significant for the creation of resonant relationships.
It will in particular analyse the influence of gender-relationships on the representation of horizontal, diagonal and vertical self world connections. Social power structures are therefore not only mirrored in the tales, laws and rites of the Ancient Israelite or Jewish religion, but also in its reception in Judaism and Christianity.
Based on the results of the international research project The Bible and Women that produced an unprecedented reception history of the bible for the first time focused on biblical women, women readers of the bible and a genderperspective project management Irmtraud Fischer this project will analyse the connection between resonance and the asymmetric gender-relations in biblical texts and in specific traditions of their interpretation and reception, especially in the arts. Of special interest is the aspect that the bible and from the renaissance onward also antiquity and ancient cultures in general were themselves transformed into spaces of resonance for European cultures.
They became imbued with significance for the present, which encountered them in dialogical relationships with all aspects of life e. Although both the bible and antiquity have become steadily less influential over the last two hundred years, the Hebrew Bible still influences the resonance spaces of the receiving religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam when it comes to the composition of gender relations. In order to allow the project to be completed within a reasonable time frame, the dissertation might concentrate on Gen as a case study.
Furthermore, the PhD student will have to carefully analyse the considerable shifts in the reception of these stories in the early church fathers and their influence on medieval theology. The cooperation with Markus Vinzent Erfurt will be a most welcome aid in this respect. Methodologically, the student will need to acquire the necessary historical and intertextual tools for interpretation. Scenes of Eden were very popular in medieval art and the Renaissance, but their popularity declines during the Baroque and during the nineteenth century they are but rarely found.
Sacral art of the past century finally features almost none. Is this a case of shifting resonance axes? While the typological Christian exegesis, always highly resonant cf. It is therefore hardly surprising that the subject remains highly resonant today in contexts of temptation, attraction and greed. Exegese in unserer Zeit These relationships can be mute or resonant. Methodologically the same basic principles can be applied as described in the first showcase.
But in this case the focus will be on a specific narrative element, the ekphrasis. Ekphrasis was and is a well-tilled field of research see e. Nevertheless, the conceptual context provided by the IGDK will offer a fresh perspective. For the question should not only be, how and what kind of sacred places are described and what role these descriptions play within the text. It will also be examined how the description itself restages the on-site-visit for the reader and how the reader can actually experience axes of self-world relations as resonant or how he can merely observe them from the outside as mute for himself.
As such places often serve as poetological images for the poem or for poetry itself the approach of the IGDK offers the innovative possibility to discuss metapoetic questions. Furthermore, in the context of the resonance theoretical heuristic a new impulse will be gained by including modern sociological theories on emotion.
The new methodology of this project will not only have a most welcome impulse on narratological research, it will also enrich the questions provided by resonance theory. The material one could study is substantial. The project itself should be specified based on the existing knowledge and interests of the PhD student, e. The PhD student could analyse poetry from the Augustan age to pagan and Christian late antiquity.
One could examine different descriptions of sacred places in Virgil; for example, we find an ekphrasis of a temple as a metaphor for poetry Georg. In this context the aspect of misunderstanding could be investigated as it can cause transformation and even failure of self-world relation; as this aspect is not explicitly made a subject of discussion by other projects of the RTG it could be an important contribution to the issues provided by resonance theory. While these sacred places are fictitious, there are, of course, also descriptions of existing monuments, for example by Paulus Silentiarius and Venantius Fortunatus.
These examples are particularly interesting as they offer the possibility to compare pagan and Christian authors as well as Greek literature from the east and Latin literature from the west. We read a subtle description of every detail, though the aim is not only enargeia clearness but also the. One can compare Venantius Fortunatus poems on sacred places also sixth century AD ; they make one think of fictitious inscriptions paying reverence to the saint or the founder of a church. At the same time they invite the reader to reflect and meditate about transcendence. In his epic about St.
Martin Venantius seems to reverse this. By describing Martin s place in heaven at the end of books 2, 3, and 4 in a jewelled style resembling the gold mosaic ornaments in contemporary apses, he makes the reader visualise a sacred place. The PhD candidate could analyse what happens on the different axes and levels of self-world relations when a recipient reads ekphraseis of sacred places in epic and when the epic through the narrative becomes a sacred place itself, wherein the reader finds himself wandering around in admiration.
Concerning pagan and Christian socio-religious practices in late antiquity collaboration with Wolfgang Spickermann, Markus Vinzent, Christoph Heil and Katharina Waldner will be fruitful. Besides the general benefit within the special framework of the IGDK the project will benefit not only methodologically from the collaboration with Stephan Moebius on sacralisation and Hartmut Rosa on resonance.
Paul as pater familias in 1 Cor 4: The social realities of hierarchy, status and equality crucially obstruct or benefit the establishment of resonant relationships. An important factor of the Pauline churches attractiveness was that they offered everyone equal social status e. Paul s social ideal rejects persons who find resonance in dominating the world and it invites persons who find resonance in appropriating the world for this distinction, see Rosa In this regard there is a strong analogy to ancient voluntary associations. Likewise, the baptism formula, which Paul quotes in Gal 3: By being similar to Greek and Roman rites and yet having strong individual features, the Christian sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist strengthen the social and religious experience of resonance by offering both initiation in the new community and a memory of its origin.
While social structures in Greek and Roman religion are mostly locally bound, Christian communities show a strong tendency towards transregional interconnection.
It seems worthwhile to combine Turner s concept of liminality with Rosa s concept of resonance. Paul and his communities obviously struggle with being betwixt and between. They are part of the ancient society and its status system, but at the same time their citizenship is in heaven Phil 3: Further, they are part of their particular city,. How does liminality function in regard to greater or lesser social and religious resonance in early Christianity?
Apart from the exchange already mentioned, cooperation concerning house churches and associations is intended with Peter Scherrer andronitis and gynaikonitis and Wolfgang Spickermann border sanctuaries. Das Urchristentum in seiner Umwelt I. Zum Vergleich zwischen paulinischen Gemeinden und nichtchristlichen Gruppen, in: Representation and reflection of resonance within texts and images in a religious context. The example of Attic tragedy Eveline Krummen Texts and images are an essential part of creating and establishing resonance in a religious context.
Both media tend to continuously refer back to sacral objects, spaces and ritual acts or religious practices. They represent and present, refer to or speak of them. In the textual media this often occurs in the form of an ekphrasis description, i. The project will be guided by the following considerations: This is made easier by the fact that ekphrastic texts tend to include descriptions of both the viewer and the emotions evoked by the object viewed, with the way the viewer experiences the objects guiding our own perceptions.
Ancient ekphrastic texts and their references to visualised religious objects and images can thus serve to study self world relations as they are established in art poetry, literature, visual arts and by art, both inwards, toward the fictional world of the object itself poetological , and outwards, towards the audience and the world.
While previous research has not yet gone beyond the reconstruction of religious objects or actions, the particular focus of the RTG on resonance theory may contribute to the study of how religious resonant experiences of self world relations were established and experienced in antiquity and which functions rituals and religious festivals played in establishing these resonant relations. Within the framework of this project, we will be able to consider the function of art in establishing self world relations in a premodern world, especially where not only the individual, but the collective is concerned.
Ekphraseis have always been a topic of interest, especially in more recent research Webb However, there is no systematic analysis of their composition and function or of the depicted religious themes and their relations to contemporary pictorial media that deal with similar topics. The research indicated here could be conducted with a focus on different literary genera, while cooperation with archaeology would be sensible when discussing pictorial media.
For a dissertation the research question could be applied to Attic drama, e. A systematic analysis of those elements is yet to be produced. Especially when looking at the comedies of Aristophanes, in which, for instance, Attic festivals play an important role, one soon becomes aware of the gap in existing research Bierl ; Bowie Ritual acts are furthermore an essential element of both tragedy and comedy. They determine types of action and how a situation of usually extreme emotional meaning is or needs to be dealt with.
On the one hand the researcher could investigate questions on a textual level references to reality, textual structure, semantisation, theatricality of the ritual , whereas on the other hand the field of the resonance created by theatrical staging could be analysed. It is possible to look into the effectiveness of resonances, both with regard to social horizontal as well as the experience of transcendent vertical dimensions. In this context the Dionysus festivals in the comedies of Aristophanes, often found near the end of the play, are of importance, for one can trace both a vertical with Dionysius and a horizontal axis of resonance when the audience and the polis are integrated into the events by the play itself.
How this is done and written into the text will be considered in the course of the project. The dissertation analyses select plays or passages of Attic drama, e. The plays or passages thereof are to be analysed with regard to cult, cultic objects, ritual action and reference to historical accuracy, as well as to their function within the comic play and with regard to how resonance axes were established.
How did the play serve to establish genuine religious resonance and self world relations, both of the individual and the collective within the polis? Or do we rather find that a profanation has taken place, moving religious context towards mere entertainment? With resonance theory in mind, the project would shed new light on the historical-political interpretation of Attic drama. The same questions could also be asked for Roman tragedy e. Seneca or for theatrical passages in Roman epic, especially in the early imperial period Statius Thebais.
Another direction could be taken when looking at textual ekphrastic passages on cult objects statues and ritual action in Hellenistic poetry, e. The Experience of Gods and Poetology in Callimachean poems, cf. Hunter , or Apollonius Rhodios e.
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The methods will be those of Classical philology and modern literary theory narratology, drama and performance theory, intermediality studies. Within the framework of the IGDK especial consideration will be paid to the meaning and function of aesthetic experience to create resonant self world relationships. This area will be further developed by showing the role which is played by the construction of being touched, by imagination, fictionality, immersion, as it applies to literature and art.
Zur Beziehung zwischen Literatur und anderen Medien. Cry 'Woe, woe' but may the good prevail! Brill s Companion to Callimachus. Theoretical Explorations and Historical Case Studies. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media. Millions of Americans were more than ever obsessed with their bodies which had become signifiers of their health and their ability to function properly as citizens of a liberal society.
The pursuit of fitness became America s new civil religion, workouts were executed with religious vigour and devotion, and particularly runners felt the inclination to share with others their personal testimonies of how they had gone through a conversion experience. In the s, an endless number of runners declared that they had abandoned the non-running world, and had been saved from a life of laziness, alcohol, fat food and physical decay.
The project will be built on the analysis of health and fitness guides, a constantly expanding genre in the s. They are easily available in a number of University libraries in Germany. A second most important source will be running magazines, and here in particular Runner s World, the bible among running magazines which is available in the main library of Leipzig University.
Launched in as a one-man-project by a passionate runner, its circulation grew from copies of six annual editions to a monthly print roll of , by the end of the 70s. Readers columns were a particularly important part of Runner s World, where readers shared their interest, experiences, questions and troubles with other readers and sought the advice of experts, for the most part runners themselves.
In addition to that, qualitative oral history interviews with participants of the running movement will be conducted to add further personal testimonies to the project s body of sources. Interviewees will be found through social media and by working with the Principal Investigator s dense network of cooperation partners in the United States. This method has proven highly productive and successful in recently conducted dissertation projects under the PI s guidance.
By using guide books, magazines and different personal testimonies, the project will explore the religious zeal of the running movement in s America. First, on a horizontal level the project will analyse the practices of how runners formed a vibrant community. Historian Lynne Luciano rightly describes runners as individuals and therefore prototypes of the ME-decade, yet at the same time they were enmeshed in a culture of exchange, cooperation and interaction with other runners.
As a group, they gained cohesion by stressing the differences in their attitudes, their values, their lifestyle and their bodies with regard to non-runners. Second, in a diagonal dimension the project will interrogate the agency of things and matter. Even though runners stressed the significance of their personal determination, at the same time things such as running shoes or energy drinks grew substantially in importance throughout the s. With Bruno Latour they can be conceptualised as faitiches as real on the one hand, yet as loaded with the.
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Third, in a vertical dimension the project will delineate how health, fitness and the body in general became focal points of neoliberalism and were thus crucial for the political, economic, and cultural formation of the s U. Methodologically, the project profits from recent intense debates on actor-network-theory Latour and on the power of things and assemblages. In particular, it will explore how different types of actors interact and thus shape complex networks, and how power unfolds in these groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sort, to quote philosopher Jane Bennett s definition of an assemblage.
Thus, it will help to shape and add to the analytic terminology of horizontal resonance. Regarding the study of sports and society, Pirkko Markula and Richard Pringle s book on Foucault, Sport and Exercise is an inspiration for the project. The history of fitness in general has received surprisingly little attention. The book by Shelly McKenzie is to be considered a rare exception.
The religious zeal of the sports movement is the topic of a single article from the early s, dealing with the religious dimension of Aerobics Edgely In a similar move, historian Darcy Plymire looked at the addictive power of running. The project will close this research gap. Within the research group, the project will benefit from particularly close cooperation with Katharina Waldner s project on the body as medium and Stephan Moebius project that explores the celebration of the own self as well as of specific communities and movements in the late capitalist economy of attention.
Furthermore, overlaps with Hartmut Rosa s project on material culture and the role it plays in the creation and stabilisation of sacralised networks should also be particularly stimulating. Physical Fitness as Religion, in: Die Hoffnung der Pandora: Untersuchungen zur Wirklichkeit der Wissenschaft. Male Body Image in Modern America. Power, Knowledge and Transforming the Self.
The Rise of Fitness Culture in America. Running and Human Potential in the s, in: In this context processes of sacralisation will be seen as the central elements for relations with the world that are experienced as extremely attractive resonant. In the process a present-oriented sociology of the sacred will not only focus on the sacralisation of communities, whose counterpart can be seen in the current sacralisation of national and religious fundamentalist groups, but also on the sacralisation of persons. The sacred respectively the processes of sacralisation are not limited to a certain area, but everything can potentially become the object of sacralisation Joas Starting from this rather rudimentary outline of a sociology of the sacred not only the sacralisation of communities, but also sacralisations of individuals hero cults, genius-cults or genius-religions one might want to think about the adoration Stefan George, Wagner or Goethe receive, the pope, football- gods or the celebration of the own self in the late capitalist economy of attention shifts into focus.
Those sacralisations take place against the backdrop of certain world views and guiding principles that are perceived as attractive and therefore need to be taken into consideration as well. At the same time sacred places, spaces and objects also play a significant role. The goal of the dissertation is to analyse processes of sacralisation in the modern era and their changes.
The focus will be sacralisations of the person like heroes, so called genies, religious leaders, homo oeconomicus and of communities like nations, fundamentalist communities, aesthetic movements. The will be those of qualitative social research, especially discourse analysis and content analysis of different media books, texts, films, web-sites. Eine neue Genealogie der Menschenrechte. An exploration of the mysteric language and iconography in Lucian s Alexander the Pseudo-Prophet and Galen s On the Usefulness of the Parts Georgia Petridou This PhD project sets out to unravel the ways the body and healing rituals were conceived in the second century AD and revisit these connections through a resonance-focused spectrum by investigating how medicine became a religiously imbued and resonant type of knowledge about the body.
The main aim is to move beyond prevalent ideas about the Greek miracle and the juxtaposition of rational and irrational medicine e. Jouanna ; Longrigg and explore for the recurrent presence of a new kind of physiology, a conception of a body that is both ritually experienced and expressed. The PhD project intentionally brings together two literary genres that have traditionally been kept apart: The student undertaking this project is encouraged to consider carefully why religious imagery and terminology drawn from mystery cults were employed to describe bodily knowledge in these two narratives dating roughly to the second century AD.
By way of comparative work, the PhD candidate conducting this research will engage in an in-depth linguistic analysis of the two texts and compare them to other literary texts roughly dating to the second century AD, where mystery terminology and iconography are used extensively: Equally useful will be a comparison with other authors dating to an either slightly earlier or roughly the same period: Can we really dismiss every single mention of mysteric language as purely metaphorical? Admittedly, the mystery language and in particular the allusions to the mysteria of Eleusis in authors of the second century AD have attracted some scholarly attention e.
In terms of methodology, the project draws on Sullivan s socio-anthropological studies, and argues that in the second century AD knowledge about the body is transmitted through culturally shaped experiences of the body. In socio-anthropology, critical knowledge of the body is frequently related to critical experiences that are religious. Such critical experiences are envisaged as crises. In a similar vein, the student undertaking this doctoral project should look at the body as construed, fragmented and reassembled in ritual processes that were determined by ritual contact with prominent healing deities, such as Asclepius of Pergamum and neos Asklepios Glykon the Gentle One at Abonouteichos in the Black Sea.
No matter how popularised medical knowledge was in the Second Sophistic Paz de Hoz ; van Nuffelen , there is little doubt that only a limited number of people would have had access to it. Most people s knowledge. In the same vein, the study of Galen s De usu partium is very important. Most of the previously done scholarly work has focused on the bodily knowledge as defined by Galen and his colleagues in the second century and pigeonholed Galen s work among the so-called scientific approaches to medicine.
The PhD candidate will be strongly encouraged to dig deeper into the Galenic corpus for indications of Galen s very unique relationship with Asclepius Legras ; Brockmann , Pietrobelli , etc. In the dominant conceptual framework, the body is given central stage in the literary and cultural production of the Second Sophistic due to the emergence of this very vague and often methodologically illusive concept of the self e.
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The highlighted role of charismatic medical experts of the calibre of Rufus, Soranus, and Galen in the societal workings of their time is considered to be the most significant tell-tale sign of an era that for the first time devoted so much time to the care of the self and the care of the body.
Seen in this light the pre-eminence of the healing cults of that period, with extra emphasis on the popularity of the Asclepian cults in the second century AD, is considered to be another side of the same coin Perkins However, as Sullivan among others has proved, the knowledge of the body in many cases can be a religious affair. This notion puts the close correlation of medicine and mystery cults into a wholly new perspective. Medicine is, in a sense, embodied knowledge that can only be experienced and expressed in religious terms.
Illness is experienced as a major crisis that challenges the foundations of the previously established identity and, thus, evokes ritually rehearsed crises the individual had to undergo as part of earlier initiatory rites. Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources and his Influence.
Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmeon to the Alexandrians. Intersections between Science, Religion and Literature. Knowledge of the Body in the Study of Religion, in: On revitalising religious ritual practices in secular contexts Hartmut Rosa Whoever walks one of the famous bridges in Paris, Cologne or Amsterdam cannot help but wonder what it is that drives inhabitants of a late modern world to seal their private bonds with publicly displayed locks at symbolic places Hammond Has the lock on the bridge come to replace the wedding ring in church to the witness not of a God, but of an anonymous public?
Similarly, what does it mean that at the sites of crimes or accidents, it never takes long until a multitude of candles and flowers and teddy bears, if children are involved prop up; a ritual that can be observed almost uniformly all across the western world? What do the much less spectacular, but more durable crosses and lights at the roadside commemorating the victims or car accidents signify? Why do even the most secular rites of passage for youngsters at the verge of adulthood and at funerals inevitably contain elements of and references to transcendent realities such as life, the world, the cosmos, history, nature etc.
The idea of this project is to scrutinise such practices and rituals which appear to establish connections of and for life through particular axes of resonance at particular junctures of life such as birth, maturation, marriage, death etc. These practices always involve particular places such as bridges , objects such as locks, crosses or teddy bears , times and social bonds, which are by and through these practices made resonant cf. There are four research questions that could be answered by this project due to the comparative structure of the IGDK: Is such a sense historically contingent or inevitable, even if beneath the articulated level?
This project, though taking present day practices as its empirical starting point, systematically involves a comparative perspective that seeks to answer its research questions by an explorative view to corresponding practices in Antiquity. For a successful dissertational project, obviously, the respective practices both now and then need to be carefully selected and restricted between the candidate and the supervisors involved.
There will be tight cooperation with the projects focusing on practices of dedication and body-related ritual practices in antiquity, with a particular focus on comparative dimensions, i. The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage. Contrary to this hype, Roman Gestirnkulte have not been a relevant research topic for a long time after the study of Carl Koch , relegating them to a third-rank phenomena, suffering from normative negligence due to decisions of the early Roman republic. At the same time, katasterismoi, placing people, emperors in particular, among the stars at their deaths, were widespread literary motives and ritual practices.
Sun worship was popular and became central in late ancient public and private cults. From the early Augustan period onwards, astrology was ubiquitous and regarded as important and much attacked throughout the period, more systematically in late antiquity. Seen as self world relationships that became resonant or mute on individual as well as cultural scales, a doctoral dissertation in History of Religion could analyse relevant textual evidence of defence and polemics for the various practices and bodies of knowledge involved in the second phase of the research group.
The sky as visible, moving and hence living? It rendered further hypothesising about its ontology and powerful interaction with human beings initially plausible. And yet, these interactions could be conceptualised as far as leaving no place for human volition, or relationships towards the sky could be bedevilled or simple felt as mute.
The frequently recurring motif of heavenly light in conversion narratives, be it of Paul or Constantine the Great or of contemporary visionaries, offers interesting material. The doctoral project would research the articulation of experiences, the reconstruction of motifs, social and cultural conditions, and situational constellations that were striving for or resulting in resonance or muteness.
Thus, the interest is not in technical detail, but in protreptic, apologetic or polemical passages of or against astrological texts, but even more in rather passing references on relationships of self and cosmos and narratives about katasterismoi. Thus, analysis might start from Ovid s Metamorphoses, Aratos treatise Phainomena, or Latin translations thereof, the preface of the Augustan poet Manilius, or epigraphic invocations of Sol Invictus. Again, the different bodies of knowledge constructed in the field, whether astrological or antiquarian or philosophical, will not be used as guidelines, but as evidence of discourses that are part of the practices and.
Special attention will be paid to ritual practices and objects such as representations paintings, lamps, jewellery worn on the body involved in the entertaining of such relationships. The very different strategies of gendering the sky will also come under scrutiny. The approach might be diachronic for the ancient Mediterranean but should contain a comparative element with regard to ancient and recent European or South-Asian discourses and practices.
Methodologically it will draw on notions of knowledge and precarious knowledge Michel Foucault, Martin Mulsow , but also, with regard to the usage of celestial phenomena for calendars and popular rhythms or activities, on Ian Hodder s concept of material and economic entanglement. For the differentiation of ritual types, Lauri Honko s typological reflections can be used. Within the faculty and range of projects of the IGDK, collaboration with Hartmut Rosa s projects on axes of resonance and Katharina Waldner s on initiatory narratives as well as Markus Vinzent s patristic research will be important locally, as is the availability of Richard Gordon as a specialist on Mithraic cosmology.
With regard to Graz, collaboration with Eveline Krummen and Christoph Heil on ekphraseis and conversion narratives will be important. Astrology, Science and Society: Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 3. Religious Transformations in the Graeco-Roman Empire. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World.
Sudhoffs Archiv Beiheft Sol Indiges und der Kreis der Di Indigetes. Frankfurter Studien zur Religion und Kultur der Antike 3. Antike Astrologie und die Etablierung der Monarchie in Rom. Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten Religious communities as axes of resonance in the Roman imperial period Peter Scherrer Beginning in the second century AD it is possible to find an increasing presence of small sanctuaries appearing simultaneously in different city districts of urban spaces in the Imperium Romanum. Most emerging complexes consisted of a temple or a treasure house with a cultic image and dedicated votive offerings, an assembly or dining room and a courtyard closed off from the outside world.
These sanctuaries are often attached to private homes and participate in their infrastructure like heating, gardens or kitchens. They house various cults, frequently so-called Oriental or Egyptian salvation cults or the Mithras cult, but Silvanus and the Viae, Mercurius or other Roman gods and goddesses were also venerated. It might be possible that the so-called house churches or oratoria of early Christianity benefitted from or were generated by the pagan structures that served as meeting points within the various town districts. In any case it becomes obvious that the cult practices and rituals performed in these complexes contrast strongly with what was seen as the official cult of the polis.
The cult practices bear witness to a systematic privatisation of faith, cult and ritual in the high and late Imperial Era which could be an important test case for a shift from resonant to mute self world relationship in the case of the polis and a religious loading of other horizontal relationships. A comprehensive study of the phenomenon has not yet been undertaken.
Existing approaches were always focused on one specific cult while general sociological phenomena were not part of the considerations. But it seems that privacy and local connections in a city s quarter vicus became more and more important over against citizens official duties, e. In times of crisis, such as in the late second century AD, the process might have accelerated even more. In many provincial towns founded by emperors from Hadrian or the Severan dynasty onwards nearly no official large size temple buildings and sacred courtyards are to be found.
The official cult seems to be reduced to a locality in the forum but no area sacra of comparable size is installed anymore. If supposed Capitolia or Imperial temples were built at all, they rose quite often on the outer limits of a town and their erection was probably due to an Emperor s visit or other occurrences of political magnitude. Thus not only religious behaviour changed, but the social and political role of Roman citizens in toto, especially after the constitutio Antoniniana.
The success of religions and cultic groups that promised afterlife and salvation was very much embedded in the change of society in different ways. Pagan provincial religion and the Christian state in late antiquity Wolfgang Spickermann In many parts of the Roman Empire, but especially in the West, pagan religious traditions were preserved for a long time, even after the Theodosian decrees at the end of the fourth century AD. The maintenance of pagan traditions in opposition to Christianity played an important role e.
In the Gallic and Germanic areas the cults of the new Germanic settlers were added to the existing polytheistic cults of the local population, a process this area had been accustomed to for centuries. The aim of the proposed dissertation project is to consider and analyse the reasons for the continuation of pagan religious practices and sanctuaries from the point of view of resonant self world relationships of the relevant groups and individuals: How did practices keep their resonant character despite the fact that both intellectual discourse and organisational means worked to silence them.
The accounts of Gregory of Tours as well as Sulpicius Severus concerning the ministry of Martin of Tours show clearly that the new settlements of Franks, Alemanni, Burgundians and other Germanic groups on Roman provincial ground had an invigorating effect on the traditional Gallo-Roman religions, helping them to remain relevant in various areas along the Rhine and inside Gaul Spickermann Gregory of Tours, for example, describes anatomical votives in a pagan sanctuary at Cologne, which will be further analysed in the context of the project proposed by Georgia Petridou.
The settlement of the Franks in the Rhine region led to a repaganisation of the left bank of the Rhine, as settlers brought their own religions with them, a circumstance well documented in the orientation of their graves and the tombs of horses Petrikovits These horse burials are found, dating to between the fifth and eighth centuries AD, in the area between the Rhine, Elbe and upper Danube, with an especially dense proliferation in Thuringia. We also find numerous archaeological finds attesting to the continuous use of cult sites, such as grave offerings of food, weapons and jewellery, which are attested for the Franks and Alemanni up until the seventh century; in Austrasia they belong to the second half of the seventh century cf.
Up until the seventh century, the political and ecclesiastical structures were not stable enough to eradicate the custom of grave offerings, while more and more tombs were systematically looted. The religion of the dead is not always clearly identifiable, as pagan and Christian symbolism is mixed.
Up until the end of the fourth century, Christianity was but weakly accepted in the hinterland and fully probably not even in the cities. Rather, the remaining polytheistic religions of the indigenous population were added to that of the Germanic settlers. In any case, the old pagan cults could. The situation did not at first change fundamentally after Clovis' conversion to Christianity; Christianisation progressed slowly in the Roman west Dassmann It gained momentum only in the seventh century with the mission of the Iro-Scottish monks.
Unlike Italy, the outskirts of the former Roman Empire saw this process take root quite slowly and with significant local differences. Although many pagan cult places were closed down in the fifth century AD due to their destruction by the Germanic invasion, the cult activities continued for a long time in the sanctuaries that remained. But the conquest by Germanic tribes would have had a serious impact on the religious belief systems and practices of the provincial population of Gaul and Germania. The question of resonant dimensions may provide the key for a better understanding of these phenomena.
In a phase of radical religio- political change with different consequences for different population groups Romanics, Germans, newcomers , scarce resources were used for the building and maintenance of Christian churches; Christian communities developed socially and radically transformed the cult calendar.
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These changes meant that not only vertical, but also horizontal and diagonal dimensions of resonance changed even where the Christianisation of the populace was only achieved in a very superficial way. This includes the sacralisation of cult sites and cult communities which the dissertation would consider alongside a similarly outlined project with a focus on modernity Stephan Moebius. Gender relevant differences with regard to religious practices may also be an important factor in this context.
Regarding the long-term traditional significance of cult sites to enable diagonal resonance dimensions, a further connection can be made to the project proposed by Irmtraud Fischer with a focus on ancient Israel. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Abh.
Germania Romana , in: Instead, these works share the widespread Hebrew memory, differing from concepts of historiography concerned with either greatness or with men becoming equals of nature, narrating only those events, deeds, or words that rose by themselves to the ever-present challenge of the natural universe Arendt In contrast, many Hebrew narratives are scandals or disgraces, disappointments and deconstructions of history, particularly as such a mode responded to the experienced suffering of loss, subjugation and diaspora.
The Bar Kokhba disaster then seems to have made people feel they had all the history they required Yerushalmi This observation raises the following question: How should we relate the meaning in history, the memory of the past, and the writing of history, particularly, when we note a clearly increasing interest in historiographical details in writings of the second century? Does this account for an exploration of memory of the past or rather for the making of meaning of history? Is it a feature of individual world appropriation or leading towards a communal and collective transmission of memory through ritual rather than through chronicle?
The question has to be asked how world views and world relations of authors and their historical or fictional characters change by them moving more and more into a less Hebrew, and more Graeco-Roman context of world perception, and conversely, what different functions their writings have in comparison to those texts that operate in a realm of memory and meaning, and how they interact.