Chair person
Prof. Margo Kitts
Margo Kitts is a scholar of Near Eastern and Mediterranean antiquity, with interests in ritualised violence, sacrifice, and feminine imagery in ancient literature. She holds a doctoral degree from the Joint Program in Near Eastern Religions, University of California at Berkeley (Department of Near Eastern Studies) and the Graduate Theological Union. Currently she is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu.
Publications include: Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005) and articles in Kernos, History of Religions, Journal of Ritual Studies, Metis, and Literature and Theology. She is also co-editor, with Mark Juergensmeyer, of Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2008.
P 06 - Ritual and Violence
Chair: Prof. Margo Kitts
mkitts@hpu.edu
Download preliminary daily schedule here (pdf)
(for better readability kindly print it out)
Common activities:
Reception
On Monday, 29 September, we will officially open the conference with a reception from 19.30 to 22.30
Key Note Lecture
Tuesday, 30 September:
Key Note Speaker Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.
"Magie und Ritual"
Plenary Discussion
Wednesday, 1 October at 18.00 introductory presentation:
Prof. Dr. Christoph Wulf, Freie Universität Berlin
"The Future of the Science of Ritual in a transcultural Context"
Exchange meeting
Thursday, 2 October from 9:00 - 12:00:
Exchange meeting between scientists from the German Archaeological Institute
and the Collaborative Research Center SFB 619
Speakers (synonym for referee, panelist, active participant)
Day 1 – Monday, 29 September 2008
9:45-10:30 Werner Riess
Cursing Democracy: The Magic of Binding Spells and
Athenian Law Court Procedures
11:00-11:45 Margo Kitts
Poinē as a ritual leitmotif in the Iliad
11:45-12:30 Scott Noegel
The Ritual Use of Linguistic and Textual Violence
in the Ancient Near East
14:00-14:45 Jarrod Whitaker
On Strong-Arms and Drinking Strength:
Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in the Rgveda
14:45-15:30 Peter Schalk
Ritualised Self-annihilation according to the LTTE
16:00-16:45 David Jo Murphy
Genre Leaking & Boundaries:
Merging Subcultures Within Pan Slavic Black Metal Music Scenes
16:45-17:30 Simone Pastor
Die Öffentlichkeit Wahrnehmung des Spielwesens in Römische Welt
17:30-18:15
„Prügelt ihn mit Thyrsosstäben!“:
Ritualisierung des Kriegsdiskurses in späthellenistischer Zeit
Day 2 – Tuesday, 30 September 2008
9:00-9:45 Alexandra Argenti-Pillen
Enigmatic sacrifice as displaced subjectivity in Southern Sri Lanka
9:45-10:30 Adelheid Pichler
Time and Space in ritual performance.
Co-existing chronotopologies in Rituals.
Reflections on Palo Monte Mayombe in Contemporary
11:00-11:45 Werner Binder
Ritual dynamics and performative aspects of torture in Abu Ghraib
Abstract
Papers are invited for a panel on the interpenetration of ritual and violence. Topics might include prebattle rituals, formalized vengeance, terrorist “performance art,” initiatory rituals, martyr paradigms, “sacrifice,” the ritual dynamics of torture, and beyond. The range of possible rubrics for this discussion is vast. It is a timely subject, but also an ancient and persistent one. Contextual intricacies will determine approaches, but, generally speaking, it is expected that presenters will be familiar with standard anthropological theories of ritual as performance/communication (Tambiah, Bloch, Bell, Rappaport, Fernandez, etc.).
