Conference: Religion in Urban Spaces

Religion in Urban Spaces

 

April 09. - 11.2014 in Göttingen

 

Urban spaces have always functioned as cradles and laboratories for religious movements and spiritualities. The conference Religion in Urban Spaces will therefore explore the intense and complex interplay between the (post)modern city and religion, bringing the city to the fore in religious research. Both renowned and young scholars from all over the world will present their latest research and bring into discussion the ways the experience of the urban - the cityscape with its pluralist culture - inscribes itself in religious practices, and vice versa: how religions appropriate and transform (the meanings of) the urban.

 

Funded by

The Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony

Kurt Hacker, M.Eng.

http://www.sciencestarter.de/urban-religions

 

 

 

Program


Wednesday 9 April At the Holbornsche Haus, Rote Str. 34
17.00 -17.15 Welcome
Regina Bendix (Dept. Chair), Victoria Hegner, Peter Jan Margry
17.15 -18.00 Keynote Rik Pinxten
God and the City: contemporary perspectives and challenges
18:00 -19:00 Reception at the Holbornsche Haus
19:00 -20:00 Guided tour to "sacred" spaces and places in Göttingen

 

 

Thursday 10 April At the Historische Sternwarte (Historical Observatory), Geismar Landstr.11
Negotiating new religious spaces in the city
Chair: Peter Jan Margry
9:00 -9:30 Dorothea Nold
Moving churches, changing cities - Spatial and iconic strategies of new congregations in Berlin and Istanbul
9:30 -10:00 Gertrud Hüwelmeier
Religious place-making and the production of urban localities - new migrants in Berlin
10:00 -10:30 Jill Sudbury
Buddhism in the British urban landscape: negotiation of new religious spaces
10:30 -11:00 Coffee Break
11.00 -11.30 Marie Stephanie N. Gilles and José Edgardo A. Gomez, Jr.
Accommodating God in the Temples of Mammon: The phenomenon of building chapels within the shopping malls of Metro Manila
11.30 -12.00 Mary McCampbell
Loving the City (Not the World?): Three Contemporary Approaches to Urban Christianity
12:00 -14:00 Lunch
Migration and religious practice in the (sub)urban realm
Chair: Karin Klenke
14.00 -14.30 Eleni Tseligka and Georgios Trantas
Home is where the Church is: Greek migrant communities and their spatial reestablishment in the German urban environment within the context of Greek Orthodoxy.
14.30 -15.00 Thorsten Wettich
Yezidi funerals in Lower Saxonian cities as an expression of urban religiosity
15.00 -15.30 Claire Dwyer
Encountering the divine in W7 and off Highway 88: suburban miracles and stories of the 'everyday enchantment' of suburbia
15:30 -16:00 Coffee Break
16.00 -17.00 Keynote Sabina Magliocco
Animal Spirits and the Urban Landscape
17.00 -17.15 Coffee Break
Creating religious coherence and identity in the city I
Chair: Victoria Hegner
17.15 -17.45 Eva Dick and Alexander Kenneth Nagel
Urban diversity governance: The interplay of religious and state representatives in local interfaith networks
17.45 -18.15 Anna Strhan
Aliens and strangers? The struggle for coherence in the everyday urban lives of Evangelicals
18.15 -18.45 Tricia C. Bruce
Building space, place, and collective identity through personal parishes
20.00Dinner
At the Sambesi Restaurant, Wendenstr. 8

 

 

Friday 11 April At the Historische Sternwarte (Historical Observatory), Geismar Landstr.11
Creating religious coherence and identity in the city II
Chair: Victoria Hegner
9.00 -9.30 Jamelyn B. Palattao and Marjorie Joy S. Almario
Contemporary responses of urban Protestants to the challenge of secularism in Iligan City, Philippines
9.30 -10.00 Riem Spielhaus
Urban representation, visibility and institutionalization of Islam in three German cities
10:30 -11:00 Coffee Break
Chair: Sabina Magliocco
10.30 -11.00 Anna Niedzwiedz
Pope and "his city": transformation of urban space of Kraków to a "lived shrine" of John Paul II
11.00 -11.30 Shamin Golrokh
Contribution of urban space and religious event to make collective meanings
11:30 -13:30 Lunch
Transforming religious norms of gender and social authority
Chair: Radhika Gupta and Victoria Hegner
13.30 -14.00 Julia Schwartzmann
The rise of female preaching and urban integration of Orthodox Jewish women in Israel
14.00 -14.30 Shruti Mukherjee
Moving beyond religious boundaries: A case study of Sai Adhyatmik Samiti (Spiritual Centres) in India
14.30 -15.00 Coffee Break
Body, music, soul and the making of urban religious spaces
Chair: Friedlind Riedel
15.00 -15.30 Sarah M. Pike
The dance floor as urban altar: How bodies transform the lived experience of cities in a New Age Dance Church
15.30 -16.00 Raphaela von Weichs
Music is prayer two times?. A transnational perspective on cultural performance and urban religiosity in Cameroon and Switzerland
16.00 -16.30 Peter Jan Margry and Daniel Wojcik
A Saxophone Divine: The transformative power of Jazz and the Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco
16.30 -16.45 Coffee Break
16.45 -17.15 Final discussion, concluding remarks
Final Discussants: Jayeel Serrano Cornelio (MPI, Göttingen) and Victoria Hegner (Göttingen)

 

 

Registration Fee: 30 Euro
For students, people on social welfare, unemployment relief, parenting time: 10 Euro
Payment is made directly and in cash!