Keynote

Prof. Dr. Birgit Meyer (Universität Utrecht) hält den Eröffungsvortrag am 13. September 2017, 18:00 Uhr, in der Aula der Alten Universität (Lahntor 3):

Religious Matters in an Entangled World. Materiality and the Study of Religion

Taking stock of the merits and problems of the so-called material turn that occurred in the study of religion over the past 15 years, in this lecture I would like to highlight the implications of this turn for the development of theories, concepts and methods for the contemporary study of religion in an interconnected and entangled world. How does the current material turn in the study of religion speak to earlier invocations of materialism as a critique of religion as mere illusion? What is its potential for developing new empirical and conceptual starting points at a time in which the notion of secularization has been rejected as dominant frame in the study of religion in modern societies? What are the implications of investigating religion from a material and corporeal angle for the comparative study of religions in plural configurations?