University of Wroclaw
Beliefs and Rituals in Antiquity
Description and organization
As far as the human memory can reach, ritual way of thinking and dealing with everyday life, is known and widely practiced. There is no known culture, that would be areligious, or that would not perform rituals of any kind. Different beliefs accompany people from the dawn of material culture, and don’t fade within the development of society or technology. Together with ritual activities, they play the role of group identification markers, and often are the main factors in actual policy towards other communities or groups. Beliefs can also determine human behaviours, as well as approaches towards different aspects of everyday life. They are also widely used to explain the nature and its laws, whenever these are not yet understood by people. But what was exactly the role of rituals and beliefs in ancient cultures? What does piety and blasphemy mean to them? How did they act with ritual layers of their lives? And what made them introduce ritual activities in almost (if not every) aspect of their existence?
The most important topics of the conference should be as follows:
Origins and development of ritual
Religious, magic, and everyday rituals
Common beliefs and ritual practices across space and time
Positive and negative aspects of beliefs and rituals – “black” and “white” magic
The role of beliefs and rituals in everyday life
Desecration and its aftermath
Beliefs and rituals as presented in textual sources
Reflections of beliefs and rituals in material culture
Cultural context of beliefs and rituals
This conference will take a comparative approach, taking a wide geographical and chronological sweep. We warmly invite scholars whose subject of study is the ancient world, including Greece, Rome, Egypt, Near East, India, and Far East. We invite linguists, philologists, historians, archaeologists, sociologists, and lawyers, hoping that this conference will be a forum for the wide range of specialists to exchange their ideas and results of research.
Proposals are now invited for individual papers or posters. Proposals must be attached as anonymous, and must not contain more than 300 words (in English).
They can be submitted by 31st January 2018 via conference registration form:
https://forms.office.com/ Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=- b5xKxM7MkS19B9awieNDI6Zzt86hAl Gi2BLNVqMD7pUMzdBSUkyTkFSNENYW kExSkRaTzAxNEQ3My4u
Applications of doctoral students should be sent via e-mail, and approved by their supervisors (not in the text of proposal, which must remain anonymous, but with supervisor’s address in CC field), to the conference e-mail address:
beliefs@uwr.edu.pl
All relevant proposals will be accepted after the formal revision made by conference committee by 28th February 2018. The final program of the conference will be released by 31st of March 2018.
Contact
Any additional questions please to contact : beliefs@uwr.edu.pl
(Text by the organizers)
Link