2021 Seminar Series – The Historical, Cultural and Critical Inquiry Cluster at the University of Newcastle
The Historical, Cultural and Critical Inquiry Cluster at the University of Newcastle (Australia) is pleased to announce the next paper in their 2021 seminar series, on Friday 20 August 2021 from 10-11am Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10).
A Zoom link is below.
The presenter is:
Tim Stanley (University of Newcastle), “The History of Religion after the Crisis of Representation.”
By the end of the twentieth century prominent historians such as Jonathan Z. Smith could aver that “religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization.” Such statements recognized the precariousness of historiography after what has been described as “the crisis of representation in the human sciences.” Philosophical critique of the referential capacity of language inevitably raised questions about the practice of historical scholarship. As Michel de Certeau put it, writing history had become akin to walking the “edge of the cliff.” Such metaphors were taken up by later Annales historians such as Roger Chartier as necessary prolegomena to the representation of the past. My aim in what follows is to demonstrate the coincidence between the crisis of representation and the cultural history of religion itself. Firstly, I will introduce the way historians have critiqued the category of religion. Secondly, this will lead to a summary of how the concept of representation became one of the most significant touchstones for cultural historians. Lastly, several examples of the history of religious books will be provided to outline the implications of this call to historiography interwoven with material artifacts.
Zoom meeting ID: 870 4036 3272 (Open from 9:45am)
Password: 783069
To Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://uonewcastle.zoom.us/j/87040363272?pwd=QTJQait4ZFFMa1pKYVgzQzhPTHF5Zz09
The event will not be recorded.
A full list of our seminars can be found here: https://uonhcci.org/