Welcome of New Member

We would like to introduce you to a new member of our study group. Jörg Quenzer is Professor of Japanology at Hamburg University. His main areas of research are Japan’s literature and the interrelation of Buddhism and literature. Among his publications are “Buddhistische Traum-Praxis im japanischen Mittelalter (11.–15. Jahrhundert): Zur Bedeutung eines Motivs in Biographien und biographischen Materialien des buddhistischen Klerus” (Hamburg: OAG, 2000) and “Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre in der vormodernen Literatur Japans” (in NOAG 183–184, 2009).

For more information, click here.

Warmest wishes for 2013!

The New Year promises to be especially enriching and productive. Two ongoing seminars at Harvard University will feature an exciting series of talks devoted to a broad range of topics and themes relating to the study of Religion and Literature. My seminar on “Classical Traditions,” held at the Mahindra Humanities Center, will feature lectures from Brooke Holmes (Princeton), Emily Apter (New York), Michèle Lowrie (Chicago) and Victoria Rimell (Rome); and the “Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum” will feature talks by Shayne Clarke (McMaster), Nancy Lin (Vanderbilt), Elizabeth Wilson (Miami), and Christian Lammerts (Rutgers). Please stay posted for detailed information.

In addition, on February 7, I shall give the annual Rodig Memorial Lecture at Rutgers University. The title of the talk is “Philology of the Flesh: Benjamin’s Collection and Kafka’s Penal Colony,” dealing with persistent metaphors of the book that derive from theological distinctions of embodiment, possession and incarnation.

Benjamin provocatively interpreted Kafka’s work by means of the geometric figure of an ellipse with two foci: the mystical tradition and modern urban experience—a fitting emblem for HolyLit. May the resulting orbit continue to generate intriguing reflections on the multiple gravitational forces that motivate our research, individually and collectively!

With warmest wishes,
John Hamilton

Holiday Season’s Greetings

As 2012 draws to a close, we would like to thank you all for your interest and contributions to our International Study Group.

Best Wishes for a Wonderful Holiday and a very Happy New Year.

Verena Düntsch, John Hamilton & Almut-Barbara Renger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Class on Religion in Crime Fiction

 Class on religion in crime fiction at Potsdam University & FU Berlin
(starting Oct. 17, 2012)

„The mystery is very much the modern morality play. You have an almost ritual killing and

a victim, you have a murder who in some sense represents the forces of evil, you have your

detective coming in – very likely to avenge the death – who represents justice, retribution.”

(P.D. James)

Religion and enlightenment – an apparent conflict raising, even in our times critical questions about human nature, morality and responsibility in the face of a transcendent reality. These questions, tokens of modernity, have found their way into popular fiction, particularly into crime fiction. This course aims to survey religious ideas and themes in crime fiction with a particular emphasis on Jewish and Christian perspectives. For more information, please see Professor Renger’s homepage with the Department of History and Cultral Studies at FU Berlin.

Call for Proposals: Myth and Religion in German Expressionism

“Metaforms” is soliciting articles for upcoming volumes on special topics. Please consider submitting essays to the following volume:

Myth and Religion in German Expressionism | Deadline for Abstracts: Oct. 1, 2012 | Contact: Almut-Barbara Renger (renger@zedat.fu-berlin.de) & ISGRL (holy_lit@web.de).

Despite a strong, Enlightenment-driven trend toward increased secularization across German-speaking culture, literature continued to exhibit various religious forms and manifestations after 1900. Alongside critical examinations of religious traditions and a general air of skepticism, one also finds a genuine spirit of rediscovery and revitalization of a spectrum of religious heritages passed down from antiquity. From roughly 1910 to 1925 the broad movement identified as German Expressionism is saturated with metaphors and motifs drawn from religious traditions, for example: ideas of fate, destiny, and the holy; plots of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption; allusions to the sacred and the mystical; and aspirations for messianic heroism. Expressionist experiments frequently viewed art in religious terms and thereby recalibrated aesthetic experience as an abandonment to some kind of spiritual, sublime energy. A deep commitment to the irrational, unpredictable, and often frightening aspects of the human or world soul drove writers and artists to shatter bourgeois expectations and complacency.

To read the full call for proposals, click here.

Launch of a New Series

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new series “Metaforms. Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity,” published from Brill. This interdisciplinary series will have a wide appeal that extends far beyond the field of Classical Studies to include scholars in Literary Studies, Art History, Film and Media Studies, Gender Studies, Religious and Cultural Studies, Intellectual History and Philosophy.

Metaforms publishes monographs and collected volumes devoted to the critical investigation of a broad and diverse field: the reception of Greco-Roman Antiquity. It is particularly committed to research that considers the practices, premises, and constituting effects of creative work that deals directly with past traditions in a variety of media and discourses including, but not limited to, literature, film, and visual art. The editors welcome projects that examine engagements with the major canon as well as with lesser known texts and histories. Studies may concentrate on single works, figures, themes, motifs or concepts as they course through multiple epochs and cultures.

With our best regards,

The Editors
Almut- Barbara Renger, Jon Solomon and John T. Hamilton

For more information click here.

Season’s Greetings

Joyeux Noël et bonne année! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Feliz Natal e um próspero Ano Novo! ¡Feliz navidad y próspero año nuevo! 圣诞快乐!新年快乐! クリスマスおめでとう。そして良い新年でありますように。 Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr! חג מולד שמח ושנה טובה! Καλά Χριστούγεννα κι ευτυχισμένος ο καινούργιος χρόνος.

 

                                                              

The Annotated Peter Pan

Allow us to recommend The Annotated Peter Pan by Maria Tatar. The story of Peter Pan is about a mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up. He spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with mermaids, Indians, fairies, pirates, and meeting ordinary children from the world outside. One hundred years after J.M. Barrie published Peter and Wendy, Maria Tatar revisits the story whose deep and controversial history comes alive in her new edition. The book – with period photographs and full colour images by iconic illustrators – is now in bookstores and available on Amazon.

Conference on Myth and Folklore in China

17 to 22 July, 2011 in Xining, Qinghai Province

A few weeks ago I had the big pleasure to once again visit mainland China
(Beijing and Xining), courtesy of the China Folklore Society in Beijing and
the Qinghai Academy of Social Sciences which invited me to give a talk at
the “International Forum on Kunlun Myth and Creation Myths
around the World.” I had a wonderful experience and in this post I would
like to share with you some photographs (for instance of a festival for Xi
Wangmu, literally Queen Mother of the West, an ancient Chinese goddess)
and video clips (for instance of Qinghai’s Tibetan Buddhist Ta’er Monastery
crawling with tourists; see below) which document the experience
and more I had in those 6 days. 

Recommendation

We would kindly like to inform you of an interdisciplinary research colloquium on “The Sacred in Literature and Cultural Theory of Modernity” (“Das Heilige in Literatur und Kulturtheorie der Moderne”) at the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg from August 5th-7th, 2011. Please find more information about this event here.