YouBeOn Map Release

26 January 2023, 6 pm

Venue: Brick-15, Herklotzgasse 21, 1150 Vienna

Release-party of the digital YouBeOn Map, developed by the research project Young Believers Online – mapping on- and offline identifications of urban religious youth (Astrid Mattes, Christoph Novak, Miriam Haselbacher, Katharina Limacher). During the evening, the digital map, representing religious lifeworlds on- and offline, will be officially presented. Additionally, the researchers will give a brief overview on selected findings from the project. Afterwards, there will be a chance to socialise during live music, snacks and drinks.

For more information click here.

Please register at youbeon@oeaw.ac.at.

War in Ukraine. Theological, Ethical and Historical Reflections. Vienna Postgraduate Symposium

13-17 February 2023

Venue: Dean's Office of the Faculty for Catholic Theology, Universitätsring1 (Staircase 8, 2nd floor), 1010 Vienna

The symposium wants to align theological research, historical accounts and philosophical-ethical questions with the current situation in Ukraine as well as to reflect on the challenges that go along with the war and its containment. It aims to create a safe space for analysis and reflection, for the exchange of ideas and knowledge, for inspiring encounters and networking.

More information can be found here.

Masterclass and Public Lectures with John S. Kloppenborg and Jens Schröter

27 February 2023

Venue: Dekanatssaal, Dean's office Universitätsring 1, Staircase 8, 2nd floor

With Jens Schröter (Humboldt University Berlin) and John S. Kloppenborg (University of Toronto), the VDTR welcomes two internationally renowned experts in the field of early Christianity and the religions of Mediterranean antiquity, respectively.

Masterclass:

The two members of the VDTR Scientific Advisory Board will offer a Masterclass on the occasion of their stay in Vienna. The Masterclass is mainly aimed at PhD students and you can find the program here. Registration is requested by February 10, 2023 to contact.vdtr@univie.ac.at.

Public Lectures:

We cordially invite you to attend the two public lectures in the evening:

John S. Kloppenborg: The Cult of Christus in Civic Space

Jens Schröter: Anthropology and a Letter: The Image of the Human Being in Paul’s Letter to the Romans and the Purpose of the Writing

The lectures will take place from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. in the Dean's Hall of the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1 (Stiege 8, 2nd floor). Refreshments will be served afterwards. For organizational reasons, we would appreciate your registration at contact.vdtr@univie.ac.at.

RaT Workshop "Religious Exits: Transformative Trajectories and Transitions into Alternative Worlds”

31st January 2023

The members of the RaT research centre organise an internal workshop entitled "Religious Exits: Transformative Trajectories and Transitions into Alternative Worlds" on 31 January 2023. The topic is currently the research focus of the centre.

Our point of departure is the consideration that religions claim to transcend immanent world orders, i.e. experiences that can be classified in the individually and collectively determinable spatiotemporal categories of the everyday world. By means of leaving immanent orders, however, not only everyday experiences are transcended, but also exits from world orders are found that include the religious subject in existing symbolic and social world orders. In this way, religion can contain an exit strategy in which the subject creates alternative places (of refuge), thereby overcoming firmly established limitations and opening up new worlds of imagination. Of course, religious practices are themselves ambivalent in this respect: on the one hand, they can prevent possible creative exits from established orders, but on the other hand, they can also radically open them up, insofar as the world of transcendence neither contains a definitively fixed territory nor an immovable order of time.

Workshops with Martin Crowley: "Opacity" and "Recognition and its Discontents"

9-11 January 2023

Venue: University of Vienna

From 9-11 January 2023, we welcome Martin Crowley, Head of the Department for French Studies at the University of Cambridge, as a guest in Vienna. Together with him, we will hold workshops on the topics of "Opacity" and "Recognition and its Discontents". The topics will be addressed in a dialogue of postcolonial, deconstructive and classical philosophical discourses with references to Eduard Gliassant, Glen Sean Coulthard, Herman Gray, Catherine Malabou and Hegel.

Guest Lecture by Paolo Costa: "The Postsecular City" 
13 December 2022, 6:30 to 8 pm

Venue: SE room 5 (1st floor, Schenkenstraße 8-10, 1010 Vienna) as well as via Zoom: click here to access the meeting (Meeting ID: 892 1249 5738, ID code: 5Y342Z)

“The Post-Secular City” is the first attempt to systematically map and assess the recent debate about secularization. It examines the alleged shift from a “secular” to a “post-secular” dispensation from the perspective of the ongoing de-construction of the secularization “theorem” (as Hans Blumenberg called it). Accordingly, the new secularization debate is described as being polarized between the “de-constructors” and the “maintainers” of the standard thesis of secularization. This is the assumption underlying an ambitious effort to map the field, which consists of a long introduction where “secularization” is analyzed as a deeply problematic concept-of-process and of eight chapters in which several protagonists of the recent debate are discussed as crucial junctions of a multidisciplinary conversation.

Open Research Day

On December 6, the next VDTR Open Research Day will take place, to which all interested parties are cordially invited! Visitors of the Open Research Day will have the unique opportunity to experience young research in the field of theology and religious studies up close. The day will be organized by young researchers from VDTR, who will offer insights into their dissertation projects in their presentations. There will be plenty of space for questions and discussions, and culinary delights will also be provided.

When: Di, 6. Dezember 2022

Where: Aula, Hof 1, Campus der Universität Wien

The Program

Please register by mail until November 28, 2022 to contact.vdtr@univie.ac.at

For more information please visit the homepage of the organizer Vienna Doctoral School of Theology and Research on Religion (VDTR)

MAIMONIDES LECTURES

15. Symposion: Die Ausübung Konfessionellen Glaubens und ihre Grenzen

Date: 23.-24. November 2022

Location: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungssaal, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Wien

Program and abstracts

Vienna University Press Reception at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) 

20. November 2022, 19 - 20 Uhr

Veranstaltungsort: Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, 1550 Court Place, Denver, CO

Wir laden Sie herzlich zum Empfang der Vienna University Press im Rahmen des AAR am 20. November 2022 in Denver ein! Neben der Vienna University Press, die ein Imprint des renommierten Verlags BRILL ist, werden wir auch unsere interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift Religion and Transformation (JRAT), die JRAT Supplementa Reihe und unsere Buchreihe vorstellen. Wir laden Sie herzlich ein, am 20. November 2022 im Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel dabei zu sein. Für Essen und Getränke ist gesorgt und wir freuen uns auf Ihr Kommen!

Link zur Website.

IPW Lecture: Uncivil religion? The rise of Christian nationalism in 21st century Europe

The Beginning of the Truly Grand Narratives.
Serial Identity(ies) and Serial Existence

Organised by the Bonn Institute for Hermeneutics in cooperation with the Vienna Research Centre Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society and the German Society for Philosophy of Religion.

11-12 November 2022

Based on the life-world observation of the increased enthusiasm for new media formats, the role of series in the formation of the recipient's identity will be discussed using the phenomenon of series as an example.

Venue: Hybrid event, Dean's office hall of the Faculty of Humanities, Am Hof 1, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Zoom Link: click here.

Link to the poster.

Link to the conference dossier.

Poetics Lecture

8 November 2022, 7pm

Martin Mosebach "What is the Catholic Novel?"

Venue: University of Vienna, Lecture Hall 6, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1

"I am a Catholic and have written a number of essays on Roman Catholic liturgy, but that is not my main business - that is writing novels. That these novels are not 'Catholic' is something that some readers find surprising from time to time and combine this with the suggestion that I could finally write a 'Catholic novel'. It is not easy for me to give a brief answer to this. I have therefore thought about what exactly the problem of the 'Catholic novel' is for me."