Publications 2019

Münster legal historian Nils Jansen from the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” has presented the first comprehensive overview of the historical process by which law became an autonomous system in society, independent of religion, politics and science.

In “New Paths for Interreligious Theology” eleven scholars from five countries discuss Perry Schmidt-Leukel’s theory that religious diversity displays fractal structures.

The sociologists of religion Prof. Dr. Christel Gärtner of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” and Prof. Dr. Gert Pickel of the University of Leipzig have published a new collection entitled “Schlüsselwerke der Religionssoziologie” (Key Works of the Sociology of Religion).

"Buddha Mind – Christ Mind" by religious studies scholar and theologian Perry Schmidt-Leukel is a Christian theological commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, an Indian Buddhist classic from the 7th or 8th century.

As high as the importance of dynasties for pre-modern history was, so weak was generally their social unity. In his dissertation “Einheit im Konflikt” (Unity in Conflict), historian Lennart Pieper analyses the formation of dynasties between the 15th and 17th centuries using the numerous conflicts in the comital families of Lippe and Waldeck as examples.

Legal scholars Nils Jansen and Reinhard Zimmermann provide rule-by-rule commentaries on European contract law, dealing with its modern manifestations as well as its historical and comparative foundations.

The new volume "Gender and Violence in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" covers a range of issues and phenomena around gender-related violence in specific cultural and regional conditions.

In his dissertation, the historian Tobias Hoffmann of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” has examined the significance of trickery in the Middle Ages using the example of bishops’ and abbots’ vitae.

The volume “Normative Crises” has emerged from the interdisciplinary work at the Cluster of Excellence. It analyses the structure of normative crises and normative transformation processes, particularly in the religious and political fields.

The Catholic theologian Prof. Dr. Michael Seewald of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” has published a new book, “Reform – Dieselbe Kirche anders denken (Reform – the Same Church, Another Thinking). In it he explores possibilities and limits of reforms in the Catholic Church.

The political attitudes and actions of Jesuits in Chile between 1962 and 1983 are dealt with in a recently published monograph in Spanish by the historian Dr. Antje Schnoor. The book is a translation of her dissertation.

The Protestant theologian and social ethicist Prof. Dr. Arnulf von Scheliha of the Cluster of Excellence has published a volume containing twenty articles on political ethics that shed light on the relationship between religion and politics.

The dissertation of the scholar of Islamic studies Cüneyd Yildirim deals with the Ottoman Sufi community of the Malāmatiyya, which was formed in the 19th century.

The volume "Maps and Travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period", edited by Prof. Dr. Katrin Kogman‐Appel, professor of Jewish Studies, discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel.

A new study by legal scholar Prof. Dr. Hinnerk Wißmann of the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” asks how “religious education for all” challenges the current constitutional law of religion.

In her habilitation thesis, the scholar of religious studies Dr. Jutta Sperber examined the Christian-Muslim dialogues of the Vatican until the death of Pope John Paul II for elements that characterise man and his position before God and in the world.

Autobiographical writings have been a major cultural genre from antiquity to the present time. A new three-volume handbook, edited by literary scholar Prof. Dr. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical approaches, systematic aspects, and historical developments in an international and interdisciplinary perspective.

Just about fifty years ago, in its declaration on religious freedom at the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church programmatically dispensed with political coercion as a means of enforcing its claim to truth. In this volume the authors dispute how the Church came to its position.

The new volume on religion and decision-making of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” examines religious decisions from antiquity to the present day. It is based on lectures given in two lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence.

The “bulwark myth” — whereby a region is imagined as a defensive barrier against a dangerous Other — has been a persistent strand in the development of Eastern European nationalisms. “Rampart Nations” uncovers the mutual transfers and multi-sided national and interconfessional conflicts that helped to spread bulwark myths through Eastern Europe.