In this paper I present a preliminary study of the role of objects in the funus as active elements through which ritual is articulated. To do so, I first argue in the introduction for the idea of funus as object-centred practice. I then briefly review the most common theoretical positions on grave goods in the archaeological discipline in general and in the Roman world in particular. I next introduce the paradigm of model-tomb goods and describe a selection of funerary landmarks in which it appears, as well as the material and personnel requirements that must have been present during the development of the funus. Finally, I suggest the hypothesis of grave goods as both everyday objects and as bodily objects and conclude with some brief notes on future directions of my research.
Steffen Andrae presents a working paper on ‚Realism, Subjectivity, and Experience in Kracauer’s novel Ginster‘
This essay documents my interpretation and analysis of Kracauer’s first novel Ginster. The book, I argue, can be read as a model case for Kracauer’s variety of realism and contains many of the philosophical ideas, issues, and sensibilities common to Kracauer’s oeuvre. This goes especially for the entanglement of aesthetic and theoretical elements, for Kracauer not only discusses social and historical issues but establishes his reflections via processing documentary elements, experiential realities, and philosophical cartography. Moreover, Kracauer makes extensive use of figurative, linguistic, and representational strategies, which correspond intimately to the various experiences of negativity laid out in the novel. [My essay is, however, not a cohesive chapter but will be disassembled and allocated to the various thematic areas of my thesis. It is thus pertinent to keep in mind the structure of the overall work.]
PhD Award 2021 for Magdalena Gercke
Magdalena Gercke has been awarded the University of Erfurt’s 2021 PhD Award for her work on „Career-related orientation patterns of student teachers with regard to school inclusion“.
The prize, donated by the University Society (Universitätsgesellschaft), is endowed with 3000 euros and was awarded this year during the digital senate meeting on 9 June due to Corona.
With the award, the university recognises the excellent dissertation of a young scientist submitted to the University of Erfurt every two years. One dissertation is nominated from each faculty and from the Max-Weber-Kollege, which has previously been awarded the highest grade. Scientific originality, innovative methodological approaches, brilliant execution and high relevance to current research are decisive features of all nominated dissertations.
Magdalena Gercke did her Master’s in Special Needs and Inclusive Education at the University of Erfurt. Here she is now an academic councillor at the Chair of Inclusive Education Research with a focus on learning. Her doctoral thesis was supervised by Professor Rainer Benkmann and Professor Sandra Tänzer.
Four other theses were nominated for the doctoral award this year. They were all awarded a prize of 500 euros each:
- Samuel-Kim Schwope (Faculty of Catholic Theology): „Bless these people you send to serve your church… Liturgical celebrations for the mission and commissioning of parish and pastoral ministers Liturgical Studies“
Supervision: Professor Benedikt Kranemann and Professor Julia Knop - Albrecht Janico (Max-Weber-Kolleg): „The scope of religious staging of generals in the late Roman Republic“
Supervision: Professor Jörg Rüpke and Professor Konrad Vössing - Paula Stehr (Faculty of Philosophy): „Exchanging social support in online communication modes. An addition of the perspective of prosocially acting communication science“.
Supervision: Professor Constanze Rossmann and Professor Sven Jöckel - Hannes Berger (Faculty of Economics, Law and Social Sciences): „Public Archives and State Knowledge. The Modernisation of German Archive Law“
Supervision: Professor Arno Scherzberg and Professor Frank Fechner
„The high quality of the submitted papers shows once again in 2021 that our university is not only a good place to study, but also offers excellent conditions for young researchers,“ says Professor Benedikt Kranemann, Vice President for Research and Graduate Service at the University of Erfurt. „We are proud of this and congratulate all the winners!“
Liza von Grafenstein presents a working paper on ‚Urbanization – Opportunity or Challenge for Child Health in India‘
While a country is undergoing the transformative process of urbanization, undernutrition, overweight, and micronutrient deficiencies are often present at the same time. Due to limited data the literature hardly examines whether urbanization is an opportunity or a challenge for child health. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the ambiguous effects of urbanization on child nutrition treating urbanization not as a dichotomy and focusing on India where the triple burden of malnutrition is prevalent. Using NFHS-4 survey data and the urbanisation classification of Global Human Settlement Layer project, I describe the opportunities and challenges urbanization brings about for children between 2 and 5 years of age. As this study sheds light onto the ambivalent role of urbanization, policy makers will be able to target public health interventions more effectively.
Here you can find more information about Liza von Grafenstein.
New publication: „Religion and its History. A Critical Inquiry“
Routledge has just published a new book by Jörg Rüpke entitled „Religion and its History. A Critical Inquiry“, a new book by Jörg Rüpke has just been published.
„Religion and its History“ offers a reflection of our operative concept of religion and religions, developing a set of approaches that bridge the widely assumed gulf between analysing present religion and doing history of religion. Religious Studies have adapted a wide range of methodologies from sociological tool kits to insights and concepts from disciplines of social and cultural studies. Their massive historical claims, which typically idealize and reify communities and traditions, and build normative claims thereupon, lack a critical engagement on the part of the researchers.
This book radically rethinks and critically engages with these biases. It does so by offering neither an abridged global history of religion nor a small handbook of methodology. Instead, this book presents concepts and methods that allow the analysis of contemporary and past religious practices, ideas, and institutions within a shared framework.
The author, Jörg Rüpke, is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Erfurt and Vice Director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg.
Jörg Rüpke
Religion and its History. A Critical Inquiry
(series: Routledge Studies in Religion)
Routledge, 2021
ISBN 9780367677084
174 pages
Hardcover: 120 £ // Ebook: 25,89 £
ONLINE WORKSHOP: Transnational Political Movements and the Imaginaries of the Homeland
Some of the crucial normative transformations resulting from ‘globalization’ are driven by transnational political networks, and are mediated by the social imaginaries that these networks create. Now, it might seem obvious that transnational networks tend to create ‘globalist’ or ‘internationalist’ imaginaries, and this is what research on such network imaginaries often assumes. Our workshop focuses on a different type of network imaginary: Its goal is a comparative discussion of transnational networks that are sustained by, and recreate, a specific imaginary of the homeland, and that sustain forms of political critique which owe their plausibility to this imaginary of the homeland. Diasporic communities often convey a stronger sense of difference, of being a ‘people’ with ‘roots’ outside their countries of residence. Here, the creation and maintenance of highly ‘modern’ global networks is reinforced by a ‘traditionalist’ notion of home. At the same time, this ‘traditionalist’ notion is itself a product of multiple ‘modern’ networks between the countries of origin and settlement. While the idea of the homeland has always been linked to excesses of the imagination (see GDR poet Thomas Brasch’s description of nostalgia for the homeland: „Ich will dort bleiben / wo ich nie gewesen bin“), the modern long-distance network, by offering a rather selective access to what happens in the homeland, makes it much easier for new fantasies about this homeland to emerge. Often, the resources enabling long-term activism within the ‘homeland’ are made available through diaspora networks driven by this kind of selective imaginary. It is also through these kinds of political mobilizations that ‘globalization’ has triggered a ‘politics of differentiation’ (Glick Schiller), and an ethnicization of difference.
The Workshop will take place from 28th till 29th May 2021. The detailed program you can find here.
If you are interested in participating please send a mail to Andreas Pettenkofer (andreas.pettenkofer(at)uni-erfurt.de).
Call for Papers: Listen to the Global South! Uncovering the Roles of Southern Actors in Writing Global Gender Norms
The M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies “Metamorpho-ses of the Political” (ICAS:MP) is an Indo-German research collaboration of six Indian and German institutions funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). ICAS:MP combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. Lo-cated in New Delhi, ICAS:MP critically intervenes in global debates in the social sci-ences and humanities. In the framework of its Thematic Module 5 “The Challenge of Gender”, we are organising the workshop “Listen to the Global South! Uncovering the Roles of Southern Actors in Writing Global Gender Norms” which will be held virtually on December 1st and 2nd, 2021.
Until 21.06.2021 you can submit papers that relate to the workshop theme and the broad topics. Here you can find more about the theme of the workshop, the submissions and formularities.
Professor Gábor Gángó researches Baron von Boineburg in Padua
Prof. Dr. Gábor Gángó, associated fellow of the Max Weber Kolleg at the University of Erfurt and member of the Research Centre for Early Modern Natural Law of the Gotha Research Centre and the Max Weber Kolleg is going to the University of Padua for one year to work on a project on „The Conversion of Baron Johann Christian von Boineburg“.
Johann Christian von Boineburg, book collector, patron of the arts, chief court marshal at the court of the Mainz Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn, and not least friend and supporter of the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, is no stranger to Erfurt. His library has long been an ornament to the city; his son, Philipp Wilhelm von Boineburg, keeper and propagator of the valuable book collection was appointed governor of Erfurt in 1702 and rector of Erfurt University in 1705. The library bequest as well as Boineburg’s scholarly correspondence, some of which was previously unknown, which Prof. Gángó collected in German archives and libraries, form the material basis for the research.
In Padua, Prof. Gángó will focus on Boineburg’s problems of faith, which crystallised in a special way in his conversion. Boineburg, who received a Lutheran education in Jena and Helmstedt, was converted at the Imperial Diet of Regensburg in 1653. In the literature, his better career prospects at the court of the Mainz Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn are given as possible reasons. Here Gángó wants to overcome the previous state of research and also reveal the intellectual motives for the conversion. To this end, he will also examine the collective thought processes in Boineburg’s correspondence with other scholars. This collective communication and thought process has a lot to do with Italy and cannot be understood without the Italian context. Impulses of the Counter-Reformation in the 17th century in general and also specifically in Boineburg’s case came from Rome, which will be shown using the collected source materials as a basis for the historical reconstruction of scholars‘ communication with Italy.
Prof. Gángó says: „I am pleased that my previous basic research on Boineburg and Leibniz is also receiving great international recognition in this way and I am looking forward to the new research results that will be revealed in the work.“
New publication: „Biographies of the Reformation“
A new book by Martin Christ, Junior Fellow at the Max Weber College of the University of Erfurt, has now been published by Oxford University Press in the series „Studies in German History“. It is entitled „Biographies of the Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, 1520-1635“.
In 288 pages, the book provides a new narrative of the Reformation and shows that the concept of the „urban Reformation“, in which cities are seen as centres of Lutheranism, needs to be reassessed, especially in cities in East Germany. It shows that in a region like Upper Lusatia, which did not have a political centre and underwent a complex Reformation with many different actors, there was no clear confessionalization. By approaching the Upper Lusatian Reformation through important individuals, Martin Christ shows how they had to negotiate their religiosity, resulting in cross-confessional exchange and syncretism.
The Society for Renaissance Studies invites all interested parties to an online presentation of Martin Christ’s book on 1 June at 7 pm. Please register at www.crowdcast.io/e/book-launch-biographies/register.
Martin Christ
Biographies of a Reformation. Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, 1520-1635
(series: Studies in German History)
Oxford University Press, 2021
ISBN 978-0-19-886815-6
288 pages
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Scientific Management (m/w/d) des Sonderbereichs SFB TRR 294 „Strukturwandel des Eigentums“ an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.
Start: 01.08.2021 | Befristet: 31.12.2024 | Vollzeit (40h) | Bewerbungsfrist: 05.06.2021
Im Rahmen des SFB Transregio 294 “Strukturwandel des Eigentums” der Universitäten Jena und Erfurt ist an der Universität Jena an der Fakultät für Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaften, Institut für Soziologie ist zum 01.08.2021 eine Stelle als Wissenschaftliche Geschäftsführung (m/w/d) des Sonderbereichs SFB TRR 294 „Strukturwandel des Eigentums“ zu besetzen.
Der Sonderforschungsbereich verfolgt das Ziel, einen fundamentalen Strukturwandel der Formen und Einbettungen von Eigentum, der spätestens seit 1989 zu beobachten ist, zu untersuchen. Der Sonderforschungsbereich mit Schwerpunkt in der Soziologie umfasst insgesamt 23 internationale und interdisziplinäre Teilprojekte.