Rituals of Investiture
Lecture Series on Stagings from Otto the Great to Barack Obama
Audience at the lecture series of the cluster of excellence.
Rituals of investiture will be in the focus of the next lecture series of the cluster of excellence “Religion and Politics”. In fourteen lectures, the academics will illuminate how people from the Middle Ages until today were inaugurated and what stagings these inaugurations complied with. The series is entitled “Rituals of Investiture. Cultures of the Political-Religious Staging from Otto the Great to Barack Obama”.
The spectrum of the lectures ranges from medieval emperors and prince-bishops of the early modern period to contemporary popes and presidents. Indian royal rituals, Muslim festivals in Pakistan and political rituals of investiture in Mexico will also be highlighted. By comparing the inaugurations of different eras, cultures and religions, the academics wish to demonstrate that the stagings were similar in form and purpose through the ages.
The lecture series will start on 20 October 2009 with an introduction by Prof. Dr. Gerd Althoff, speaker of the cluster and medievalist, and with a lecture of Constance sociologist Bernhard Giesen on “Ritual and the Theatre: Outlines of a Sociological Theory of Performance”. The series will end on 2 February 2010 with a contribution of the New York director and professor Richard Schechner. He will speak about “The Ramlila of Ramnagar, North India: A Ritual Political Entertaining Performance of Great Magnitude”. The series emerged from the cluster of excellence’s research focus “staging”. The organisers are historian Prof. Dr. Gerd Althoff and ethnologist Prof. Dr. Helene Basu. (vvm)
Programme
Winter semester 2009-2010
Tuesday 6-8 p.m.
Lecture theatre F2, Fürstenberghaus
Domplatz 20-22
48143 Münster
Picture Gallery of the Lecture Series
Photos
