According to geographer Jacques Lévy „cospatialité” is „une des interspatialités caractérisée par la mise en relation de deux espaces occupant la même etendue”. Under purely Euclidean conditions, co-spatiality is essentially impossible. The concept, however, invites us to search for places or spaces that are used, imagined or interpreted by different groups, simultaneously or consecutively, for both sacred and profane purposes.
Co-spatiality: Changing rules of double use, excluding, inviting, imagining
According to geographer Jacques Lévy „cospatialité“ is „une des interspatialités caractérisée par la mise en relation de deux espaces occupant la même étendue“. Under purely Euclidean conditions, co-spatiality is essentially impossible. The concept, however, invites us to search for places or spaces that are used, imagined or interpreted by different groups, simultaneously or consecutively, for both sacred and profane purposes. In cities as typical „machines of synchronization and inclusion“ such phenomena are particularly frequent. Is co-spatiality therefore a sign of urbanity? For the question of the reciprocal formation of religion and urbanity, the concept of „co-spatiality“ offers an interesting lens into phenomena of supposition and entanglement of urban spaces, or their double use, and phenomena. This perspective invites us to consider new theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping how religion, as cultural technique to mark out spaces (and concurrently to cut-off others) through ephemeral or lasting ritual uses, intertwined with the development of urbanity.
The conference will look at religiosities beyond monumentality by focusing on (primarily) non-sacred urban spaces that are continuously, temporarily or „rhythmically“ appropriated not only by different religious groups, but also other urban and non-urban actors. By bringing together approaches from different disciplines, such as religious studies, archaeology, sociology, history and urban planning, the conference will reflect on the negotiations of different religious, social or ethnic groups and genders over public, quasi-public and domestic spaces within a cross-cultural, cross-temporal and inter-disciplinary framework. The contributions, spanning from early historic India to contemporary Europe, will examine the overlapping as well as the sequential uses, appropriations and productions of complex urban spaces, and on the resulting changes concerning norms, imaginations, narratives and discourses of what it is to live in a city (= urbanity).
The conference is part of the DFG-funded Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (FOR 2779). The group is based at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt, Germany. This group analyses the mutual formation of urbanity and religion from antiquity to the present. It focuses on specific case studies, like Mediterranean or Indian cities of the ancient world, early modern political and religious centres or modern Indian or European towns, but it also introduces more wide-ranging theoretical investigations.
Programm
Wednesday, 11 November
15.00–15.15 – Welcome and Introduction to the Conference by Susanne Rau, Jörg Rüpke and Elisa Iori
Panel 1: Threshold Spaces: The Ambivalence of Access
15.15–16.45 – Chair: Susanne Rau
15.15–16.00 – Sara Keller (Erfurt): Hydro-Spaces and Place Sharing in the South Asian Context
16.00–16.45 – Supriya Chaudhuri (Kolkata): Between River and Street: The Ghāt or Landing-Stage as Overlapping Space
16.45–17.15 – Coffee Break
Panel 2: Staging Power, Religion and Imaginaries in Performing and Utilitarian Spaces
17.15–18.45 – Chair: Asuman Lätzer-Lasar
17.15–18.00 – Richard Gordon (Munich): The Imaginaire of the Roman Amphitheatre at Carthage: Narratives in Competition
18.00–18.45 – Amira Bennison (Cambridge): The Multiple Functions of the Baḥāʾir Estates of the Almohads in twelfth-century Iberia and the Maghrib
19.00 – Dinner
Thursday, 12 November
Panel 3: Inside the Nodes: Revisiting Ritual Practices, Rhythms, Boundaries and Ties of Urban Lives in Indian Cities
10.00–12.15 – Chair: Sara Keller
10.00–10.45 – Elisa Iori (Erfurt): Spatialising Buddhist practices in Urban Spaces
10.45–11.30 – Abdul Nisar M. (Calicut): Cosmopolitanism in Microspaces: The Structure and Function of Akams of Kuttichira in Calicut
11.30–12.15 – Susanne Rau (Erfurt): The Market and the City: Mercantile and Religious Entanglements in Cities along the Malabar Coast (Medieval, Early Modern)
12.30–13.45 – Lunch
Panel 4: Reframing Social Realities: Shifting Narratives and Shifting Spaces
13.45–15.15 – Chair: Martin Christ
13.45–14.30 – Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli (Erfurt): The Poverty Plateau: The Space of the Urban Street Poor in Early Christian Literature.
14.30–15.15 – Dietmar Mieth (Erfurt): The Same Spaces tell Different Religious Stories: Five Examples of Co-spatialities in Paris about 1300
15.15–15.45 – Coffee Break
Panel 5: Technologies of the Un-Seeing: The F(r)ictional Production of Space
15.45–17.15 – Chair: Jörg Rüpke
15.45–16.30 – Maureen Attali (Fribourg): Temple Ruins versus Temple Mount: Constructing two Distinct Theological Spaces in Late Ancient Jerusalem
16.30–17.15 – Monica Smith (Los Angeles): Seeing and Un-Seeing Others’ Religions: The Dilemma of Urban Spaces
19.00 – Dinner
Friday 13 November
Panel 6: Unfolding Interspatialities in Micro-Spaces
09.00–10.30 – Chair: Simone Wagner
09.00–09.45 – Beat Kümin (Warwick): Tower Ball Deposits and Urban Spaces in the German Lands
09.45–10.30 – Martin Christ (Erfurt): The Bedchamber as a Shared Space in Early Modern Europe
10.30–11.00 – Coffee Break
Panel 7: Urban Inter-Religious Spatializations: Interaction and Marginalization
11.00–12.30 – Chair: Martin Fuchs
11.00–11.45 – Cristiana Facchini (Bologna): Port Cities and Religious Diversity: Exploring the Long Nineteenth Century
11.45–12.30 – Dionigi Albera (Aix-en-Provence): Mixed Sanctuaries and Urban Interspatiality: Some Mediterranean Examples
12.30–13.30 – Final Discussion introduced by Jacques Lévy (Paris/Reims)
13.30 – Lunch
Kontakt
To register for the online participation, please contact Verona Schwarz by November 9, 2020: urbrel-conf@uni-erfurt.de