Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities – Page 4

Non-Belief and Non-Believers: evolution and challenges of contemporary irreligiousness

This Conference, organised by the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) with the collaboration of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations and Spiritualties and of the University of Piemonte Orientale, aims to investigate the heterogeneous phenomenon of contemporary unbelief from a multifaceted perspective which includes the juridical and socio-anthropological point of view.

This field of investigation, little explored at a scientific level, will be analyzed under the multiple aspects of individual and collective phenomenology, without neglecting the confrontation with the challenges of secularization and post-secularization, not least the tension between freedom of expression and protection of sacred, particularly evident in matters of blasphemy laws. The prismatic identities of irreligiousness will be compared on an international level, in a dialogue that also involves the increasingly emerging parodic religions, with the aim of drawing common lines in an approach that is not identitarian but rather the exercise of religious freedom.

Programme 15:00 – 19:00

15:00 Welcome Greetings:

Roberto Grendene (The Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics, Italy)
Francesco Piraino (Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities, Giorgio Cini Foundation)
Roberto Mazzola (Ecclesiastical Law and Intercultural Law, University of Piemonte Orientale)

15:30 Speeches:

Non religious belief landscape of Europe
Andrew Copson (President of Humanists International)

Freedom of speach and Blasphemy laws
Marco Croce (University of Florence)

17:10 Coffee break

17:30 Round Table:

Moderator: Francesco Alicino (LUM University)

The diversity and recent evolution of non-religion in Europe

Anne-Laure Zwilling (CNRS, Strasbourg)

Secularizations and their posts: crisis of the secularization theory and emergence of a post secular paradigm
Debora Spini (New York University in Florence and Syracuse University in Florence)

Why religion is different?
Victor Javier Vazquez Alonso (University of Sevilla)

The conference is in English with simultaneous translation into Italian

For more information:
non-belief.conference@cini.it

Reservation required

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Call for Papers “Comics and the Invisible” Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 3-4 June 2022

As a medium dealing with – and in some cases, challenging – the boundaries of visual and narrative dimensions in contemporary culture, “Comics and the Invisible” calls for a set of ideas, analytical methodologies, and theoretical vocabularies to articulate the limits of visibility within comics culture. In which terms comics can be understood as an invisible art or, from a very different perspective, as an art of the invisible? How can comics be a tool for a fruitful storytelling and visualization of ideas/topics that rarely find space within the ordinary ecology of visual media? Is this art of the invisible an instrument to connect with other dimensions (mental, psychological, spiritual, ontological)?

Inspired by the EU funded project “Invisible Lines” we invite participants to investigate different aspects of the invisible in comics culture, as a complex notion that can offer a fresh perspective around what is seen and what is not seen – and the motivations behind these absences – within the historical and/or contemporary traditions of the ninth art. We welcome submissions that explore the invisible in comics and illustration, stemming from every tradition of comics culture as well as in cultural, media, art theory that deals with ninth art and sequential narratives.

CfP Comics and the Invisible final

Workshop | Arabic-Islamic Calligraphy

In the Islamic world, calligraphy is the main medium of visual aesthetic expression and is both transcultural and transdisciplinary.
It is transcultural, because the various calligraphic styles have been influenced by different cultural contexts, although there is also a certain continuity, especially as regards
religious calligraphy. And it is transdisciplinary because it concerns not only the strictly religious dimension, but also the visual arts and poetry.

Intended for students on the Arabic Language and Literature course at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice and any interested visual arts enthusiasts – and organized with the collaboration of Ca’ Foscari University -, this workshop will explore the beauty and complexity of Islamic calligraphy, also through a performance. Andrea Brigaglia (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) will illustrate the historical and theoretical framework of calligraphy in the Islamic world, with a special focus on the production of manuscripts.

The workshop will be led by the Italian-Jordanian artist Eyas Alshayeb, born in the heart of the city of Amman in the 1980s. In his childhood, he was influenced by a family atmosphere in which art, poetry and literature were essential elements of daily life. He became interested in the art of calligraphy when an adolescent, thanks to his passion and curiosity that led him to learn this wonderful art in the workshop of a local master calligrapher. He later attended various calligraphy schools, such as the Egyptian school of Khudair Bursaaidi, and from the age of fifteen he was taught by some of the leading experts of Middle Eastern Arabic calligraphy, learning from each of them the most sophisticated calligraphy techniques of the main Ottoman, Baghdad and Cairo schools.

Download the pdf Workshop di Calligrafia Araba 2021

INVISIBLE LINES

Invisible Lines
Squadro Edizioni Grafiche Collana Sigaretten
Bologna 2021
Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
https://invisiblelines.eu/

The book collects the works of twelve comics and illustrators artists coming from France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Germany, and Italy, selected for a residency at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice.

The authors explored the ideas of uncertainty, invisibility, epiphany, through the silence of places and listening to the stories of those who live on the borders. They tried to embrace memories and inner images, connecting the spiritual dimension to the physical one, as part of a shared biological process.

https://sigaretten.net/products/aa-vv-invisibile-lines

Call for Papers: Sufism and Gender in Contemporary Societies

Call for papers to participate in the Conference

Sufism and Gender in Contemporary Societies

(Fondazione Giorgio Cini – 3 December 2021)

Deadline: 1st June 2021

DOWNLOAD THE CALL

This conference then aims to explore these themes of gender and sexuality within contemporary and historical Sufi traditions. Keeping in mind the call to decolonize knowledge production and epistemologies that subvert binaries of “resistance versus subordination” in Muslim women’s life-worlds, we aim to take an expansive discussion of the complex processes of the agentive formation of gendered Sufi subjectivities.

Organisers
Francesco Piraino (Ca’ Foscari University)
Feyza Burak-Adli (Northwestern University)
M. Shobhana Xavier (Queen’s University)

Study Day | Sufism and Gender: Female Religious Authorities in Contemporary Societies

Sufism, the spiritual tradition of Islam, is undergoing a period of renewal with charismatic leaders attracting new disciples from diverse social and cultural backgrounds.
Global Sufi leaders and public figures, both in Europe and North Africa, are promoting a debate on religious and social gender norms, emphasising the importance of both religious freedom and adherence to Islamic values. These Sufi leaders do not impose a specific perspective. In fact, liberal and conservative, and secular and religious positions coexist in the debate involving veiled
and unveiled women, feminists and non-feminists. The study day will explore the boundaries between the secular and the religious by raising issues such as: how do Sufi women worldwide conceptualise freedom and adherence to Islamic values? How do they embody Islamic values and norms?

The event has been organised in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, Venice

Curators:
Francesco Piraino (Ca’ Foscari University)
Feyza Burak-Adli (Northwestern University)
M. Shobhana Xavier (Queen’s University)

Download Program Sufism and Gender

Registration

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Religiographies

Open-access and peer-reviewed journal, curated by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Religiographies is dedicated to the study of religious phenomena, fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and psychologists. Mysticism, esotericism, and spirituality are the three main themes of the journal, which are explored within their historical and cultural contexts, challenging traditional categories of religion. The heterographie section, dedicated to artistic and visual works, expands the understanding of the phenomena discussed.
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Religiographies is an open-access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal dedicated to the field of religious studies and published under the auspices of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Since 2025, it has been recognised by ANVUR (the agency of the Ministry of Education) as a scientific journal for Area 11 (Historical, Philosophical, Pedagogical and Psychological Studies); Religiographies wishes to foster an interdisciplinary approach to religious phenomena, promoting dialogue between historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, philosophers, and psychologists.
We aim at promoting an anthropological history and at the same time a socio-anthropology with a strong historical emphasis, intending to avoid both socio-anthropological presentism and history only focused on ideas and institutions, while ignoring materiality, emotions, everyday lives.
We encourage at deconstructing and challenging categories (including the very word “religion”) not as a theoretical exercise, a proof of concept, but as a practice, showing with fieldwork data, the porosity and frailty of our categories.
We aim at discussing those topics that are often neglected by social and human sciences – such as mysticism, esotericism, spirituality – which, in the words of Michel de Certeau, “haunt scientific epistemology”. Our aim is not to create another journal on alternative spiritualities, but to bring these themes back into mainstream discussions of religious and cultural phenomena.
Finally, with the concept of heterographies– we intend to give space to other forms of representations, such as photography, comics, video, and artwork. These other languages will allow contributors – scholars and artists – to explore dimensions beyond the social sciences frame of objectiveness and coherence. This section, called heterographies, is not strictly scientific: it will not be peer-reviewed, but will receive feedback from the editors and invited commentators.

We invite submission on all religious phenomena, with a special focus on:

comparative approaches;
cultural transfers: acculturation, appropriation, imagination;
continuities and discontinuities between religious discourses and everyday life practices;
transhistorical perspective, stressing the connections between old and new trends;
liminal phenomena between the secular and the religious;
the relationship with alterity, understood not only as religious, but also in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity;
phenomenology of the religious body: perceptions, emotions, sensations and construction of the body;
epistemological and methodological debates about the transferability and translatability of religious studies categories.

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Editor-in-chief
Francesco Piraino, Fondazione Giorgio Cini / Harvard Divinity School

Editors
Mark Sedgwick , University of Aarhus
Dionigi Albera, CNRS-IDEMEC

Assistant editors
Elena Bernardinello, Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Eva Salviato, Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Copy editor and proofreader
Anna Fitzgerald

Book Reviews
Valentina Gaddi, Université de Montréal

Editorial board
Stefano Allievi, University of Padua
Egil Asprem, University of Stockholm
Katell Berthelot, CNRS–Aix-Marseille University
Francesco Cerchiaro, Radboud University
Andrea De Antoni, University of Kyoto
John Eade, University of Roehampton
Diana Espírito Santo, Universidad Catholica de Chile
Fabrizio Ferrari, University of Padua
Mattia Fumanti , University of St. Andrews
Giuseppe Giordan, University of Padua
Alberta Giorgi, University of Bergamo
Boaz Huss, Ben Gurion University
Salvatore La Mendola, University of Padua
Marco Pasi, University of Amsterdam
Enzo Pace, University of Padua
Stefania Palmisano, University of Turin
Vadim Putzu, Missouri State University
Khalid Razzhali, University of Padua
Antonio Rigopoulos, University of Ca’ Foscari
Armando Salvatore, University of McGill
Chiara Tommasi, University of Pisa
Fabio Vicini, University of Verona
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Religiographies vol.3 n.2 (2024)
Religiographies vol.3 n.1 (2024)
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Religiographies vol.2 n.2 (2023)
Religiographies vol.2 n.1 (2023)
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Religiographies vol.1 n.1 (2022)
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Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity Conscientious Objection and Contestation of Civil Norms

Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity

Conscientious Objection and Contestation of Civil Norms

Edited By Claude Proeschel, David Koussens, Francesco Piraino

September 26, 2022 Forthcoming by Routledge

Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity (routledge.com)

This book provides a multidisciplinary and comparative look at the contemporary phenomenon of conscientious objection or contestation in the name of religion and examines the key issues that emerge in terms of citizenship and democracy. These are analysed by looking at the different ways of challenging or contesting a legal obligation on the grounds of religious beliefs and convictions.

The authors focus on the meaning of conscientious objection which asserts the legitimacy of convictions – in particular religious convictions – in determining the personal or collective relevance of the law and of public action. The book begins by examining the main theoretical issues underlying conscientious objection, exploring the implications of the protection of freedom of conscience, the place of religion in the secular public sphere and the recognition and respect of ethical pluralism in society. It then focuses on the question of exemptions and contestations of civil norms, using a multidisciplinary approach to highlight the multiple and diverse issues surrounding them, as well as the motives behind them.

This book will be of great interest to scholars, specialists and graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are interested in issues of religious diversity. Researchers and policymakers in think-tanks, NGOs and government units will find the volume useful in identifying key issues in understanding the phenomenon of conscientious objection and its implications in managing ethical diversity in contemporary societies.

For more information

Invisible Lines

This travelling advanced course for young artists starts from a paradox: how do you draw the invisible?
Invisible Lines (www.invisiblelines.eu) has been developed around this question.

The educational project for young comic-book artists and illustrators from the European Union has been conceived by the
Fondazione Giorgio Cini Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities with the
consultancy of Matteo Stefanelli and in partnership with three first-rate European players in the field of
illustration, the graphic novel and comics: the Hamelin Associazione Culturale (Italy), the publishers Baobab
Books (Czech Republic), specialized in children’s books, and Central Vapeur (France), an association bringing
together professionals from the worlds of publishing, the visual arts and education.

Invisible Lines will enable 12 young artists, selected through an international call for applications (see
details on www.invisiblelines.eu) to go on a two-year course that is also a journey through Europe and various
artistic practices. Three workshops in Italy, the Czech Republic and France will be led by three major artists:
Stefano Ricci, Juraj Horváth and Yvan Alagbé.

The call for applications on www.invisiblelines.eu is open from 5 October to 10 December 2020.
To find out more about the project and how to take part, please visit www.invisiblelines.eu

Download the call for artists

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino

London, Palgrave

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030617875

Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.