The conference is organised as a cooperation between
the International Graduate School
Resonant Self–World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices
Max Weber Kolleg, University of Erfurt and University of Graz
and
the International Research Group
Media and Religion
University of Munich
Organisation committee
Lukas Bartl
Dr. Elisabeth Begemann
Prof. Dr. Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
Prof. Dr. h.c. Jörg Rüpke
Topic and aims of the conference
An offering for the family’s gods in ancient Rome, an opulent wedding celebration, or a state funeral for a royal person: rituals mould the relationship between individuals, groups and the world in a variety of constellations that are negotiated depending on the cultural, social and historical setting. By shaping the tension between the self and the world, ritual practices provide orientation. From everyday routine to specific occasions during a year, from individual habits to significant biographical steps, or from the intimate sphere to state acts, rituals permeate the social fabric on many levels and in various ways.
Rituals are forms of communication in which visions of the self and the world are negotiated. On the one side, ritual communication arises from the interaction of a broad range of media – which may include things, music, sound, songs, words, texts and books, light, or food – with the human body. Consequently, media and material arrangements shape the time and the place where ritual communication takes place. On the other side, rituals are widened, reproduced, and reenacted in the public sphere by media that, again, vary depending on the socio-historical context. Media in rituals and rituals in media are always intertwined.
The conference aims at analysing the entanglement of media and rituals by highlighting three dimensions: representation, performance and transformation are outlined as specific perspectives on ritual as a communicative practice. These three topic lines are meant as a heuristic possibility to disentangle the complexity of mediality of ritual.
Overall, the conference aims at
- presenting, locating and intertwining different perspectives on mediality of ritual in an interdisciplinary exchange,
- implementing the exchange between the case studies from ongoing individual projects and a general conceptual reflection on mediality, ritual and religion,
- enhancing a comparative approach across times and cultures highlighting lines of continuity, differences and transformation over time, cultures and social spheres.
For information please contact rw@evtheol.uni-muenchen.de