Summer School Religion in the Public Domain

Course conveners: Anna Fedele, Kim Knibbe, Erin Wilson

 

Dates: July 11th – 17th 2013

Venue: ISCTE-IUL | Avenida das Forcas Armada 1649-026| Ala Áutonoma | Clube ISCTE (TBC)

 

This Summer school, organized jointly by CRIA-IUL, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon and the University of Groningen, is directed to undergraduate and post-graduate students interested in the public role of religion in contemporary societies. Through workshops and lectures students will become acquainted with current research on the topic carried out in contemporary society. A field trip to Fátima will introduce students to research skills such as participant observation and informal interviewing. Through discussion assignments students will develop their insight into the role of religion in present-day societies and the diverse ways this can be researched.

 

Contact persons in Lisbon: Anna Fedele (fedele.anna@gmail.com) | Mafalda Melo Sousa (cria@cria.org.pt)

Contact person in the Netherlands: Kim Knibbe (k.e.Knibbe@rug.nl)

Costs: €150 – this includes the catering but does not include the trip to Fátima (about €40/person)

PROGRAMME

 

Thursday 11th of July
 

14.00-14.30

Welcome and opening remarks by course conveners

14.30-15.00

 

15.00- 16.00

16.00- 16.30

16.30-17.00Coffee and tea

 

Keynote lecture 1: Ramon Sarró, title to be confirmed

Discussion

logistics

Dinner in townFriday 12th of July 9.00 – 10.30

 

10.30- 11.00

11.00- 12.30

12.30- 13.30

 Workshop 1 New Pentecostal subjectivities and individualism amongst young women in Nigeria, Juliet Gilbert

Coffee and tea

Workshop 2: on fieldwork, Anna Fedele

Lunch 

14.00- 17.30

Preparing for fieldwork in townSaturday 13th of July All day

  Fieldtrip to Fátima with Anna Fedele Sunday you’re free!Monday 15th of July 09.00- 10.30

 

10.30-11.00

11.00- 12.30

12.30- 13.30

13.30- 15.00

 

15.00- 15.30

15.30-16.00
16.00- 17.00
Keynote and discussion, Mariano Barbato, Pilgrimage Stories. Apparitions, Shrines and Politics

Coffee and Tea

Comparing notes on fieldwork

Lunch

Workshop 3: Islam in public space, Nina Clara Tiesler

With the support of texts previously circulated among students, discuss discourses about Islam and public domains.

Coffee and Tea

Workshop 4: the invisibility of death in public space,  Clara Saraiva

 

Dinner in townTuesday 16th of July 09.00-10.30

 

 

 

 

 

10.30-11.00

11.00-12.30

12.30- 13.30

13.30-1500

 

15.00-15.30

15.30- 17.00Workshop 5: ‘Aren’t you looking for citizenship in the wrong place’: secular normativity and the making of the religious subject among Muslims in Portugal, José Mapril

With the help of texts previously circulated among students, we will discuss theoretical issues of charisma and religious leadership, with examples from African churches in Europe

Coffee and tea

Workshop 6: Leadership and Charisma, Ruy Blanes

Lunch

Workshop 7: New Age, Orthodox Christianity and secularism in public and private spaces, Eugenia Roussou

Coffee and Tea

Workshop 7: Afro-Brazilian Religion and Public Space, Diana Espirito SantoWednesday 17th of July 9.00-10.30

10.30- 11.00

11.00- 12.30

12.30-13.30Presentations and discussion

Coffee and Tea

Closing debate

Lunch and goodbyeLecturersRuy Blanes (ICS-UL and LSE)

Anna Fedele (CRIA-IUL)

José Mapril (CRIA-FCSH/UNL)

Ramon Sarró (Oxford University)

Nina Clara Tiesler (ICS, University of Lisbon)

Eugenia Roussou (CRIA-FCSH/UNL)

Kim Knibbe (University of Groningen)

Erin Wilson (University of Groningen)

Diana Espirito Santo (CRIA-FCSH/UNL)

Clara Saraiva (CRIA-FCSH/UNL)

Juliet Gilbert, University of Oxford

Mariano Barbato, University of Passau and Babes-Bolyai-University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Place:  ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon

Avenida das Forças Armadas, Ala Autónoma, Clube ISCTE

Closest Underground Station: Entrecampos

 

 

This Summer School focuses on the role of religion in the public domain in contemporary societies through the discussion of current ethnographic research and through a field trip to Fatima during the annual celebrations. It is open to undergraduate and post-graduate students who are interested in these topics. For students who have not followed any course on religion in the public domain, it is obligatory to prepare for the course through the readings specified.

Combining theory and empirical research this Summer School offers theoretical as well as practical tools that will provide the students with a wide spectrum of strategies to address the intersections of religion and the public domain in ethnographic contexts.

Around 10 participants will be accepted in this Summer Course. We welcome also MA and PhD students and consider that variety of educational levels will enrich discussion.

All participants will receive a presence certificate. If participants successfully complete the assessments they will also receive a diploma of the Summer Course, corresponding to 6 ECTS.

The assessment process will include:

–       Participation in seminars (20%)

–       Field trip (20 %)

–       Final paper (60%)

 

The final essay can be written in Portuguese or English.

The Summer Course is taught mainly through seminars and will include a fieldtrip. The seminars will be given by academics with a strong international profile that have both empirical and theoretical expertise on the subjects treated.

The seminars provide a space for in depth, participatory debate on the ethnographic research that the students have gotten to know through their readings and through the presentations of the seminar teachers. The readings will be distributed beforehand to prepare in advance for the seminars, enabling students to comply with the assessment requirements.

The course will be taught in English

http://cria.org.pt/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=430

 

Organizers:

Anna Fedele is a research fellow of the CRIA- University Institute Lisbon. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender and religion and particularly on issues of corporeality, sexuality and ritual creativity. She has recently been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene. Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France (Oxford University Press, 2013). She is the co-editor of Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices (Berghahn, EASA Series. 2011) and Gender and Power in Contemporary Spiritualities: Ethnographic Approaches (Routledge, Studies in Religion, 2013).

Kim Knibbe received her PhD (Cum Laude) in the anthropology of religion at the VU University Amsterdam in 2007. She is now Assistant Professor in the Department for the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen. She has worked on Nigerian Pentecostal churches in Europe, on Catholicism and on contemporary spirituality. Her first book, Faith in the Familiar, is forthcoming with Brill in 2013. With Anna Fedele she edited the book Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality. Ethnographic Approaches which has just come out with Routledge. Dr Knibbe is also the coordinator of the Religion, Conflict and Globalization Masters trajectory in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies.

Erin K. Wilson received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2008. She is now the Director of the Centre for Religion and Conflict in the Public Domain based at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on the intersection of religion with various dimensions of politics and public life, at the local, national and global levels. She has published on religion and global justice, globalization, active citizenship and the politics of asylum in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Refugee Studies and Global Society. Dr Wilson spent four years as a research fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her current research interests include the relationship between religion and political apologies, climate change and political activism in an increasingly post-secular age. Her books include After Secularism: Rethinking Religion in Global Politics, and Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy, co-authored with Manfred B. Steger and James Goodman


 

Summer Course on Sexuality and Morality, Lisbon, September 2013

Summer School

Sexuality and Morality: Intercultural Perspectives and Mediations

Lisbon, 16-21 September 2013

The Second Edition of the Summer School on Sexuality and Morality will be held at the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL), in Lisbon, Portugal, from the 16th to the 21st of September 2013.

Around 20 participants will be accepted.

Scholarships are available from the Grundtvig Program funded by The European Commission (see below)

Objectives and Rationale

From the very beginnings of anthropology the entanglements of sexuality and morality have captured the imagination of scholars, challenging their normative assumptions and calling into question their descriptive and interpretative tools. What can be said of these entanglements at the beginning of the 21st century, after decades of research on the matter? Are there still unbroken taboos in the social sciences? How are we to understand sexuality and morality, and how can these issues be investigated? How are relations between sexuality and morality being (re)defined? What is the role of religion, politics, and commerce in (re)shaping these relations? How can anthropology improve our understanding of such complex entanglements?

In recent years, sexuality and morality have received increased attention in the social sciences. While sexuality has ‘gone global’ and become a highly seductive concept (Moore 2010), its entanglements with moral issues and anxieties continue to provide important insights on key societal concerns and transformations. To illuminate such concerns, an emerging body of scholarship on morality in the social sciences, and more particularly in anthropology, seems particularly well suited. By giving new impetus and analytical purchase to the notion of morality, this scholarship helps us rethink sexuality and its wider implications.

Challenging taken for granted assumptions on sexuality and morality, and focusing on their intersections, the course is designed to move from general theoretical and methodological considerations to a range of concrete examples dealing with religion, politics and commerce. Religious taboos, sex work, and same-sex marriages are among the cases addressed. They will help participants answer the key questions asked during the course, and provide exemplary illustrations of how sexuality, morality, and their complex relationships can be rethought in the light of the latest debates in the field of anthropology.

Without neglecting classical authors such as Margaret Mead and Michel Foucault, the course has a strong emphasis on contemporary debates in the social sciences. It will review key perspectives and approaches, offer– participants a flexible methodological and theoretical framework, and provide a space for debating a range of case studies and concrete examples under the guidance of lecturers with first hand ethnographical knowledge on the addressed topics.

 

Programme

The course will consist of 5 lectures (3 hours per day), complemented with 5 seminars (3 hours per day) that will allow in-depth discussion of previously shared material. There will also be a fieldwork excursion on the final day.

Combining theory and empirical research this Summer Course offers theoretical as well as practical tools that will provide the participants with a wide spectrum of strategies to address the intersections of sexuality and morality.

The lectures and seminars will be structured around the following themes:

Day 1: The anthropology of sexuality and morality: An introduction

Day 2: Delineating the field: Key debates on sexuality and morality

Day 3: Sexuality, taboo and religion

Day 4: Sex work and the commerce of intimacy

Day 5: Same-sex marriages and the ‘end’ of gender

On day 6, there will be a fieldwork excursion and a final discussion

Lectures and seminars will be given by academics with a strong international profile that have both empirical and theoretical expertise on the subjects treated.

The lectures are structured to proceed from more general theoretical and methodological considerations (lessons 1 and 2) to a range of concrete examples dealing with religious taboos (lesson 3), sex work (lesson 4), and same-sex marriages (lesson 5).

The seminars provide a space for in depth, participatory debate on the topics addressed during the lectures. They are based on the discussion of key texts sent to participants before the beginning of the course. The distributed material allows participants to prepare in advance for the seminars, enabling also those who wish to undertake the course’s assessment to comply with its requirements.

Tutorials are provided to participants who wish to receive the course’s diploma (6 ECTS) to support them in the preparation of their final papers. The tutorials offer methodological, theoretical, and practical guidance to help participants design and write up their research.

The course is taught in English, but discussion may be in English and Portuguese depending on the participants’ preferences. As for the tutorials and the final essay, Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Italian are accepted.

 

Lecturers

Anna Fedele is a research fellow of the CRIA- Lisbon University Institute and an associated researcher of the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Currently she is a Visiting Fellow of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender and religion and particularly on issues of corporeality, sexuality and ritual creativity.  Anna is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene. Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France (Oxford University Press, 2012). She has also co-edited Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices (Berghahn, EASA Series 2011) and Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality. (Routledge Studies in Religion, 2013)

Valerio Simoni is a research fellow of the CRIA- Lisbon University Institute, and a Visiting Research Associate at the Centre for Tourism & Cultural Change (UK). His current researches, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba and Spain, focus on transformations of intimate and economic lives and controversial enactments of friendship, love, sex, and commerce in international tourism and migration. He has published his work in books and anthropology journals including Etnografica, Civilisations, and Tsantsa.

Miguel Vale de Almeida is professor of anthropology at the Lisbon University Institute and his research focuses on gender, masculinity and sexuality. He is the author of numerous international articles and of The Hegemonic Male: Masculinity in a Portuguese Town (Berghahn 2004).

 

For enquiries related to the course content or the scholarships, please contact the Summer School co-ordinators, Valerio Simoni (vals_sim@yahoo.com) or Anna Fedele (fedele.anna@gmail.com)

Scholarships

This summer school has been included in the Grundtvig Training Database and a limited number of scholarships are available. We encourage prospective participants coming from countries in which the Grundtvig Program operates to apply for these scholarships after prior consultation with us regarding the places available.

You can find general information about the Grundtvig program at:

http://ec.europa.eu/education/trainingdatabase/index.cfm

Countries eligible:

http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/national_en.htm

 

First edition, Summer School Sexuality and Morality, September 2012

The Summer School

“Sexuality and Morality: From Religious Taboos to the Commerce of Intimacy”

will be held at the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL),

in Lisbon, Portugal, from the 10th to the 14th of September 2012.

Coordinators: Anna Fedele and Valerio Simoni

The entanglements of sexuality and morality have often captured the imagination of scholars, challenging their normative assumptions and calling into question their descriptive and interpretative tools. What can be said of these entanglements at the beginning of the 21st century, after decades of research on the matter? Are there still unbroken taboos in the social sciences? How are we to understand sexuality and morality, and how can these issues be investigated? How are relations between sexuality and morality being (re)defined? What is the role of religion, politics, and commerce in (re)shaping these relations? How can anthropology improve our understanding of such complex entanglements?

The Summer School “Sexuality and Morality: From Religious Taboos to the Commerce of Intimacy” will be held at the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL), in Lisbon, Portugal, from the 10th to the 14th of September 2012. The program encompasses lectures and seminars.

The course is suited to anyone who wants to challenge taken for granted assumptions on sexuality and morality and wishes to rethink their complex relationships in the light of the latest debates in anthropology. Combining theory and empirical research, the School offers participants a wide spectrum of strategies to address the intersections of sexuality and morality. It reviews key perspectives and approaches in the social sciences and humanities, and provides a space for debating a range of case studies and concrete examples. Religious taboos, sex work, and same-sex marriages are among the cases addressed.

Lectures and seminars are given by academics with a strong international profile that have both empirical and theoretical expertise on the subjects treated.

Click below for more information about the contents of the course and for information about future editions of the

Summer Course on Sexuality and Morality

Click below for more information on

application procedures to the Summer School on Sexuality and Morality, 

For enquiries related to the course content, please contact the Summer School co-ordinators:

Valerio Simoni (vals_sim@yahoo.com) or Anna Fedele (anna.fedele@yahoo.com).

For questions related to application procedures, please contact Valerio Simoni (vals_sim@yahoo.com)