KNAW Akademie Colloquium. Making Sense of Religious Texts: Patterns of Agency, Synergy and Identity. Day 3: Materiality and Transmission

Organisers: Sabrina Corbellini, Mladen Popović, and Stefania Travagnin (University of Groningen)

Texts and textual analysis are still a much-discussed topic in social and cultural research. Foundational arguments on textual analysis have contested the role of language and logocentric expressions, however the study of religious cultures seems to be strongly text-coded, and indeed the study of and on texts has always been crucial in the academic research and teaching of religion. Up to date scholarship hadiscussed ‘text’ within one specific religious tradition, with the effect that ‘text’ has been debated within the boundaries of one religious identity and not from an inter-religious and inter-cultural perspective. Furthermore, texts have been assessed through an interdisciplinary perspective that sets the ‘textual’ in relation and dispute with the ‘extra-textual’ (such as rituals and material culture).

This Colloquium will gather scholarsin different fields and workon texts and with texts, in order to provoke a debate on textuality that goes across religious traditions and academic disciplines. The Conference Committee is formed by three scholars from the University of Groningen: Sabrina Corbellini, Mladen Popović and Stefania Travagnin.

This debate on ‘text’ will be organised around the following five key issues: (1) modality (of texts), (2) authority (of/on texts), (3) practice (visualizing and ritualizing texts), (4) materiality (texts as objects) and (5) transmission (translation and transmission of texts).

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Day 3: Materiality and Transmission

29 October 2015

• 9.30-10.30: Panel Materiality of Texts I
  • August den Hollander (Antwerpen/VU University Amsterdam), Humphrey Prudeaux (1648-1724) and his Life of Mahomet (1967) and The True Nature of Imposture fully displayed in the Life of Mahomet (1967)
  • Eibert Tigchelaar (KU Leuven), The Material Variance of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Context
  • Neil Schmid (Royal Asiatic Society China), Encomia on Paintings: The Buddhist Body and Its Poetic Representations in Medieval China
• 10.30-11.00: Coffee Break
• 11.00-12.00: Panel Materiality of Texts II
  • Eibert Tigchelaar (KU Leuven), The Material Variance of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Context
  • Ping Yao (California State University Los Angeles), Women and Gender in the Practice of Ritual Copying of the Lotus Sutra in Tang China (618-907)
• 12.00-13.30: Lunch
• 13.30-15.00: Panel Transmission and Translation of Texts I
  • Stefano Zacchetti (Oxford University), TBA
  • Angelo Cattaneo (New University of Lisbon), Is Asia one? Early Modern Geopolitical Representations of Asian Religions in Valignano, Carletti, Ortelius, Botero
  • Ben Wright (Lehigh University), The Translation Enterprise in the Greek of Ben Sira
• 15.00-15.30: Coffee Break
• 15.30-17.30: Panel Transmission and Translation of Texts II
  • Francis Borchardt (Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong), What Do You Do When a Text is Failing? The Letter of Aristeas and the Need for a New Pentateuch
  • Kiri Paramore (Leiden University), The Textual Basis of the Rituals Legitimating Sovereign Power in Pre-modern Imperial China and Japan
  • Janet Dyk (VU University Amsterdam), The “Translation Enterprise”: Translation Universals in the Peshitta Rendering of Kings
  • Agata Palugh (The British Library), From Cover to Cover: Reading Jewish Multiple-Text Manuscripts

See also:

Day 1: Modalities and Day 2: Authority and Practice