Lecture Series | The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf
News from Apr 17, 2023
Organised by Christian Meyer, project "The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts and Communities", Research Area 3: "Future Perfect".
Over the course of 2023 the EXC 2020 project "The Making of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts and Communities" will host a nine-part lecture series. Summarized best by the alternative title of "on the way towards a theory of the modern religious bookshelf" each of the nine lectures in the series will explore the space in between a single volume and the organizations that house them. Starting with the observation that religious literature often occupies a peculiar place in modern libraries and bookshops sitting under headers like Eastern Wisdom, Esoteric, or World Religion, we wanted to know how those bookshelves developed, who were local communities or global networks behind the new canon and who were (or are) the relevant institutions or agents. Especially, how to interpret the role local practices played in displaying, shelving, or sorting books and what this means for the development of the modern religious bookshelf as a sort of agent in forming a new global religious canon.
Programme
11 January 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Introduction: What is the 'Modern Religious Bookshelf'?
Prof. Dr. Christian Meyer & Anton Terhechte, M.A. (both EXC 2020, Freie Universität Berlin)
1 February 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Universalism, Perennialism, and the Modern Religious Bookshelf
Prof. Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University)
17 May 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
From Huysmans to Crowley: The Devil in Turkey
Prof. Dr. Laurent Mignon (Oxford University)
14 June 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
'On Us a New Light Has Come'. Friedrich Max Müller's Bookshelf of Comparative Religious Literature
Prof. Dr. Arie Molendijk (University of Groningen)
21 June 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
PD Dr. Katja Triplett (Leipzig University)
12 July 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Mircea Eliade and the Function of Reading for Religion in Modernity
Stefanie Burkhardt, M.A. (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
18 October 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Hinduism, Tantra, and the Question of an 'Esoteric Corpus'
PD Dr. Julian Strube (University of Vienna)
8 November 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Dr. Cosima Wagner (Freie Universität Berlin)
20 December 2023 | 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
How the Upanishads Became Part of the Religious Bookshelf (And What This Has to Do With Islam)
Prof. Dr. Franz Winter (University of Graz)
Veranstaltungsort
Freie Universität Berlin
Room 2.2051 (Holzlaube)
Fabeckstraße 23–25
14195 Berlin