Workshop Programme“Enshrining the Past: Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age”
Leipzig University, 27–29 October 2021

Enshrining the Past:Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age
International Workshop at the Centre for Advanced Studies“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, Leipzig University
27–29 October 2021
Hybrid event format, on-site event in Seminar building (Universitätsstraße) and online via Zoom.
Convenors: Marian Burchardt and Nur Yasemin Ural (Leipzig University)

Approach
As the intensity of the politics around cultural identity is growing across the world, the notion of heritagemaking, or “heritagization”, has acquired new political urgency. At the same time, these politics have animatedfar-flung controversies over the religious and secular sources of belonging along with the (political and cultural)values of ethnic, religious and racial majorities, minorities and the states that are supposed to represent them.
This raises an intriguing set of questions: Under what conditions are certain religious artifacts, rituals andworldviews framed as heritage? Whose religious heritage is considered worthy to be selected, canonized andennobled as elementary for nations’ collective memory? Who is systematically excluded and left to oblivion in
the politics of religious and secular heritage? Which social groups are central to these processes?
The workshop will take place as a hybrid event. The corresponding connection data will be madeavailable to all registered participants shortly beforehand.

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Workshop Programme“Enshrining the Past: Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age”
Leipzig University, 27–29 October 2021

Schedule
Wednesday, 27 October 2021
14:00–14:30

Registration

14:30–15:00

Welcoming
Christoph Kleine (Leipzig University) and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig University)
Opening Remarks
Marian Burchardt (Leipzig University) and Nur Yasemin Ural (Leipzig University)

15:00–17:00

Panel 1: Heritage and ‘Emplacement‘Katelyn Williams (Brandenburg University of Technology) andFranziska Singer (Philipps-Universität Marburg)“Architecture of Mosque-(re)construction in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Contested Field:
Funding Streams and Popular Perception”
Annegret Roelcke (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)“Turkish, French, Kurdish or Islamic Heritage? Contesting the Name of Pierre Loti Hill inIstanbul”
Simon Coleman and Evgenia Mesaritou (University of Toronto)“Possessing and Being Possessed by the Past: On the Ambiguities of ‘Secular’ Heritage“
Giuseppe Tateo (Leipzig University)“The Monumentalization of the Cross in Postsocialist Bucharest“

17:00–17:30

Break

17:30–19:00

Keynote Lecture
Aike Rots (University of Oslo)“When ‘Religion’ becomes ‘Heritage’: Category Formation, Nationalism, and the Question ofOwnership”

19:00

Dinner2/4

Workshop Programme“Enshrining the Past: Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age”
Leipzig University, 27–29 October 2021

Thursday, 28 October 2021
10:00–12:00

Panel 2: Affectivity of InheritanceÇiçek İlengiz (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity)“Heritigizing Love: Inheriting the Energies of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi (1207-1273)”
Sana Chavoshian (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)“War Heritage as ‘the Sacred Defence’: Religious Affects and Secular Resentments in Iran-Iraq
Former Warzones”
Jerrold Cuperus (University of Queensland/Utrecht University)“The Question I didn’t Ask: Creating and Sustaining Value in Networks of Heritage
Collection.”

12:00–13:30

Lunch

13:30–15:00

Panel 3: Heritagization and the Legal Frameworks
Anindita Chakrabarti and Shriram Venkataraman (Indian Institute of Technology)“God’s Gold, Legal Frames and the Question of Material and non-material Heritage: theCase of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala, India”
Pooyan Tamimi Arab (Utrecht University)“Lockean Neutrality or How Sheep Are Ritually Slaughtered”
Amal Sachedina (American University, Washington D.C.)“Transforming Religious Authority through Memorializing the Material Past in the Sultanateof Oman”

15:00–15:30

Break

15:30–17:00

Panel 4: Heritage as Cultural/Religious Collective Identity
Julia Martinez-Arino (University of Groningen)“The Politics of Bottom-Up Jewish Heritagization in Barcelona: External (Mis-)Recognition andInternal Competition”
Daan Beekers (University of Edinburgh)“Who Gets Excluded from ‘Christian Culture’? On Culturalised Religion, Islam andConfessional Christianity”
Martijn Oosterbaan (Utrecht University)“Religion, Secularism and Cultural Heritage in Brazilian Carnival”

17:00–17:30

Break

17:30–19:00

Keynote Lecture
Regina Bendix (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)“A Rose by Any Other Name? Assessing the Parsing Reach of Heritage-Making”

19:00

Dinner3/4

Workshop Programme“Enshrining the Past: Religion and Heritage-Making in a Secular Age”
Leipzig University, 27–29 October 2021

Friday, 29 October 2021
10:00–12:00

Panel 5: Heritage as Material/Embodied Practice and Memory
Mariam Goshadze (University of Bayreuth)“Culturalized Religion: A Cross-Continental Perspective”
Paulina Kolata (Lund University)“Technologies of Salvation: Cloned Afterlives of Buddhist Heritage in Contemporary Japan”
Avi Astor (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)“‘Artification‘ and the Secularization of Religious Symbols and Traditions: The Reconfigurationof Nativity Scenes as Works of Art in Barcelona”
Yunus Telliel (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)“Ottoman Turkish as Religious Heritage: Secularism and the Politics of Language”

12:00–13:30

Closing Remarks

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