News Archive 2012

In Old Testament research the literary character, the time and place as well as the intention of the so-called priestly passages of the Pentateuch are in discussion.

Double success in the Humanities and the Natural Sciences: not just one, but two of the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Awards are going to Münster University (WWU) for 2013.

In many premodern Islamic societies, religious endowments as for example the “waqf“ were a central element of socio-economic structure.

The Kushite cemetery of Sanam is the main focus of this publication of Angelika Lohwasser, which is the publication of her habilitation, submitted at the Free University Berlin in 2008 and awarded with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the German Research Foundation in 2009.

Drawing from a range of archival materials such as depositions and supplications, this book focuses on village communities and their “political languages” in 18th-century Germany.

A modern reading of Islam, which systematically unfolds divine love and mercy as a theological concept beyond legalistic religion, lies at the heart of the recent publication by Mouhanad Khorchide, member of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”.

A luxurious Jewish manuscript appears at the core of a new publication authored by Prof. Dr. Katrin Kogman-Appel, professor of Jewish Studies at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”.

An edited volume from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” examines the relationship between religion and politics in modern philosophy and in systemic legal questions today.

Bijan Fateh-Moghadam, a legal expert in the cross-section of criminal law, medicine and religion, comments on the Cologne Case on male circumcision and its likely political consequences in a Case Note for the German Law Journal.

The public lecture series on “Religious Plurality. A challenge for politics, religion and society” organised by the Cluster of Excellence and the new “Centre for Religion and the Modern Age” (CRM) will start on 9 October.

The study examines the content of the fundamental subjective rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion as well as their specific effects.

“Religious plurality” takes centre stage in the next lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” and the Centre of Religion and the Modern Age. The series is open to the public.

The quest for nearness to God is often connected with particular locations, the symbolic value of which usually by far exceeds the concrete reality. It is this dynamic that Vos explores in this slightly revised version of his habilitation thesis (Münster).

Historian Andreas Pietsch looks at the French scholar Isaac La Peyrère whose striking philosemitism and strong criticism of the bible can be put into context to the relationship to his patron Prince Condé.

The cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus, the local deity of the small town of Doliche in modern South-East Turkey, rapidly spread to large parts of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century CE. The papers compiled in this volume are written from an archaeological and historical perspective and examine a wide spectrum of questions, from the importance of the cult in the West, the means by which it spread and its status within the Roman army to the role of women in the cult.

Drawing on an extended body of historical sources from a bi‐confessional region plagued by long and intensive strife between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the study explores the relationship between the formation of confessional churches, religious practice, and conflict.

The joint commission of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the German Council of Science and Humanities and the Federal and State Ministers of Science approved the renewal proposal of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in Bonn today.

The book offers an interdisciplinary approach to a phenomenon which has been mostly neglected in learned studies concerned with the Middle Ages.

This edited volume subjects fundamental statements of the secularization theory to a historical review. Sociologists and historians collaborate in working out to what extent the image of an increasing differentiation of religion and politics applied to the last centuries needs to be revised.

Natural History changed in a fundamental way around 1550. Knowledge of the European flora and fauna grew exponentially. New research methods, models of description, and classification systems were developed.

“Religion, law and politics” takes centre stage in the next lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”. The series is open to the public. Lectures will be held on Tuesdays at lecture theatre F2 of the Fürstenberghaus.

The catalogue of an exhibition conducted by two museums in Muenster and a team of the cluster “Religion and Politics” combines the description of famous pieces of sacral art in Westphalia with essays which elucidate the religious background of their foundation.

“Religion, law and politics” takes centre stage in the next lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”. The series is open to the public. Lectures will be held on Tuesdays at lecture theatre F2 of the Fürstenberghaus.

Secular and ecclesiastical courts without clear jurisdictions determined the jurisdiction of the courts for centuries. Peter Oestmann looks at the old empire with its variety of imperial cities and territories and numerous confessions; thereby, he breaks down principles of common law into sectional fragments.