Participating scholar:
Prof. Frederick M. Smith
Frederick Marcus Smith is Professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions at the University of Iowa, jointly appointed in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. After doing his masters in 1976 at the Centre for Advanced Study in Sanskrit, Poona University, and receiving his doctorate in 1984 from the Department of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Frederick Marcus Smith has distinguished himself in his chosen fields of study: Vedic and Hindu ritual and religious traditions, Medieval Indian religious literature (esp. Purana, Tantra, Bhakti literature), and the anthropology and sociolinguistics of ancient and classical India.
Major publications include:
The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in Classical Indian Literature and Civilization (Columbia University Press) and The Vedic Sacrifice in Transition: A Translation and Study of the Trikandamandana of Bhaskara Misra (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute). He is currently working on four major monographs: The Asvamedhika parvan of the Mahabharata; The Veda in the Twentieth Century; Divine Service: The Sixteen Works (Sodasagranthah) of Vallabhacarya and a critical edition of the Sudarsanasamhita, an 18th century Sanskrit text on ritual and sorcery.
>> next Participating scholar:
Among the scholars who have
agreed to participate are:
>> Prof. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger
New Forms of Research on Rituals – An Announcement
We are delighted to announce the publication of the conference
proceedings "Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual" (ed. by Axel
Michaels et al.) by the publishing house Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, Germany.
Please find below details of the publication:
Volume I: Grammars and Morphologies of Ritual Practices in Asia (2010)
Section I: Grammar and Morphology of Ritual
Editors: Axel Michaels (Heidelberg) & Anand Mishra (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritual Discourse, Ritual Performance in China and Japan
Editors: Lucia Dolce, Gil Raz & Katja Triplett
Volume II: Body, Performance, Agency, and Experience (2010)
Section I: Ritual and Agency
Editor: Angelos Chaniotis (Princeton)
Section II: Ritual, Performance, and Event
Editor: Silke Leopold and Hendrik Schulze (Heidelberg)
Section III: The Body and Food in Ritual
Editor: Eric Venbrux, Thomas Quartier and Joanna Wojtkowiak (Nijmegen)
Section IV: The Varieties of Ritual Experience
Editors: Jan Weinhold (Heidelberg) and Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff)
Volume III: State, Power, and Violence (2010)
Section I: Ritual and Violence
Editor: Margo Kitts (Honolulu)
Section II: Rituals of Power and Consent
Editor: Bernd Schneidmüller (Heidelberg)
Section III: Usurping Ritual
Editors: Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta (Zürich)
Section IV: State and Ritual in India
Editor: Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda (Kiel)
Volume IV: Reflexivity, Media, and Visuality (2011)
Section I: Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual
Editor: Udo Simon (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritual and Media
Editor: Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit (Heidelberg)
Section III: Ritual and Visuality
Editors: Petra H. Rösch (Köln) and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen (Berlin)
Section IV: Ritual Design
Editor: Gregor Ahn (Heidelberg)
Volume V: Transfer and Spaces (2010)
Section I: Ritual Transfer
Editors: Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity
Editor: Nils Holger Petersen (Kopenhagen)
Transforming Heidelberg into the center of research on rituals, the conference proceedings are an result of the international conference “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual” with its immense seminal potential of the traditional subject. Held by the collaborative research center SFB 619 “Ritual Dynamics” from Sept 29 to Oct 2, 2008, it was one of the most comprehensive conventions in the field of humanities and cultural science at the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg. As many as 600 participants from more than 15 disciplines discussed the future of research on rituals. More than 260 experts presented their research results in 22 panels, some of which spanned several days.
Aswell as the the conference the conference proceedings assembled all experts of importance to research on rituals in order to reassess the traditional subject in view of the latest research. Its outcomes will be pathbreaking for a future transcultural, interdisciplinary and multi-methodical research approach and as a basis for a possible ritual science. The convention was marked by the broad range of disciplines and the corresponding diversity of methods. It embraced a tremendous variety of topics in terms of cultural geography and spanned a time horizon from the antiquity to the present.
