Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Abrahamic Vernaculars Fall Symposium in conversation with Dr. Bryan Roby (October 11, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/87177 87177-21639247@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 11, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Judaic Studies

Join Dr. Richard Newton of The University of Alabama, speaking on “'Myths ‘that the Dark Past Has Taught Us’: Beyond Liberation in Black Religion" and Dr. Kayla Renée Wheeler of Xavier University discussing “The Return of Prairie Dress: YouTube as Site for Interreligious Dialogue and Mainstream Modest Fashion Trends” for a conversation with Dr. Bryan Roby of The University of Michigan. This symposium is part of the Abrahamic Vernaculars series.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 06 Oct 2021 13:19:31 -0400 2021-10-11T12:00:00-04:00 2021-10-11T14:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Judaic Studies Conference / Symposium Abrahamic Vernaculars
Magic and its Malcontents: Historiography as Heresiology (November 11, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/88011 88011-21648526@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 11, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Judaic Studies

Shaily Shashikant Patel, Virginia Tech

“Strange things circulate below our streets,” Michel de Certeau writes. For him, coherent historiographies elide incoherent realities and give the illusion of a past which can be tidily reconstructed. The study of “magic” in early Christian literature illustrates how such scholarly preference for coherence occludes ancient ambiguities. Prevailing methodologies emphasize the “constructedness” of magic, defining it as a polemical charge levied at theological outsiders. This methodology obtains in early Christian studies even as adjacent fields refine their ideas of ancient magic. Rather tellingly, this methodology also presupposes that theological insiders exist in our earliest sources.

In this talk, Dr. Shaily Patel, Virginia Tech, discuss how these polemical notions of “magic” make historians into heresiologists. Like our ancient counterparts, we dismiss what troubles the scholarly orthodoxy of nascent Christianity as opposed to magic. Perhaps we agree with de Certeau that history is never sure, but our methodologies yield the same illusory certainty adopted by heresiologists who helped ossify Christian orthodoxy. Ancient magic exposes our heresiological inclinations and forces us to contend with what lingers below our streets.

“A history that is never sure is not no history; rather, it is a history of possibility.”

Register here: https://myumi.ch/4pxv3

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 25 Oct 2021 15:27:41 -0400 2021-11-11T16:00:00-05:00 2021-11-11T18:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Judaic Studies Livestream / Virtual Image
Religion and Materiality: Re-thinking a Complex Relation from the Angle of Food (November 12, 2021 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/88012 88012-21648527@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 12, 2021 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Judaic Studies

The concern of the material turn in the study of religion is to allow for fresh, detailed and conceptually challenging empirical research that lends itself to comparison. Compared to objects, images or buildings, so far food has received little attention in this research strand. Exploring Feuerbach’s ideas about the stomach as the basis for his materialist philosophy, I argue that food is a material form that allows us to throw new light on the physical and corporeal dimensions of religion. I explore the possibilities for research that arise from a focus on food by turning to a collection of legba-figures that were taken from their site of origin among the Ewe in Ghana and Togo to the Übersee-Museum Bremen, Germany. My main concern is to explore how food – as a material form at the core of how humans relate to and are part of the world – is a key focus for research aiming to fold materiality back into our understanding of religion.



Birgit Meyer (PhD in Anthropology, 1995) is Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she studies religion from a material and postcolonial angle, seeking to synthesize grounded fieldwork and theoretical reflection in a multidisciplinary setting. Recent book publications include Figuration and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Contested Desires (2019, coedited with Terje Stordalen), and Refugees and Religion. Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories (2021, coedited with Peter van der Veer). She directs the research program Religious Matters in an Entangled World (www.religiousmatters.nl).

Register at https://umich.zoom.us/j/96568104186

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 07 Oct 2021 11:31:33 -0400 2021-11-12T15:00:00-05:00 2021-11-12T17:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Judaic Studies Livestream / Virtual Abrahamic Vernaculars Series, Fall 2021