Fragments of Experience: Approaching “Lived Religion” From Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages

Poster for Fragments of Experience: Approaching “Lived Religion” From Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages

With papers on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the conference considers the question of “lived religion” in this premodern era in a comparative perspective, drawing from a wide variety of theoretical literatures from a multiplicity of disciplines (philosophy, performance studies, history of emotions, history of experience, anthropology, material culture, and religious studies, to name just a few). Each speaker interrogates the notion of religious “experience” from many angles and in many contexts, in the hopes of ultimately outlining historical and methodological conclusions that will be paradigm-shifting for our field(s).

This event is open to the public. All are welcome.

Speakers and Papers

“Hunting Infidels: Jihad, Crusade, and Sovereignty in Two Ivory Caskets From Medieval Iberia”
Abigail Krasner Balbale, New York University

“Animating Attachments and Constructing Kin: An Affective Archaeology of Late Antique Monastic Refectories”
Camille Leon Angelo, Yale University

“Twenty-Three Linen Tablecloths: Textile Use in Churches in Egypt”
Jennifer Ball, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center

“The Habits of Prayer of Medieval Religious Women in the Leominster Prayerbook”
Katie Bugyis, University of Notre Dame

“The Gardens of Hermits”
Virginia Burrus, Syracuse University

“Conclusion/Reflection”
Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School

“Ritual and Religious Experience in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi”
Bilal Ibrahim, Providence College

“You Had to Be There: A Proposed Methodology for the History of Medieval Monastic Religious Experience”
Lauren Mancia, Brooklyn College

“Chance & Lived Religion: The Material Culture of Transforming Randomness Into Purpose”
David Morgan, Duke University

“Saint Gerald of Aurillac and Late-Carolingian Lay Religiosity”
Andrew Romig, New York University

“‘Abba Has Begun to Make Money From the Beer Business’: Beer, Lived Religion, and Changing Rabbinic Law for Financial Benefit”
Jordan Rosenblum, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Fragmented Magic and Counter-Magic or Lived Devotion to Saints Justina and Cyprian”
Brian P. Sowers, Brooklyn College

“Worship Through the Senses: Jewish Devotional Experiences and Daily Life in Late Antiquity”
Karen Stern, Brooklyn College

More Information: For more information and to register for the conference, e-mail Lauren Mancia or Brian Sowers.

Supporting Groups: This event has been sponsored and supported by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, the Office of the Provost, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of History, the Department of Classics, and the Brooklyn College Library.