Paulson Lectures in the Study of Religion are organized by the Estonian Society for the Study of Religions in cooperation with the Estonian Doctoral School for Humanities and Arts, and the School of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Tartu. This year, the lectures will be held by Catharina Raudvere, who is an internationally renowned scholar of Old Scandinavian religion and mythology and contemporary Muslim women’s practices and Sufi women in the Islamic world.

Schedule

19.11.2024 – 16:15-17:45 at Lossi 3-117, Tartu

Seeing and Being Seen. Community Life Beyond the Established Religious Institutions

Based on fieldwork materials from Turkey and Bosnia, this lecture will focus more generally on contemporary pious life outside the established religious institutions. To what extent are such constellations new in a more profound sense, and to what extent is it a question of visibility of practices with a long-term history? Muslim women’s prayer circles will be the point of departure for the discussion.

20.11.2024 – 16:15-17:45 at Lossi 3-117, Tartu

Claims of Religious Authority and Legitimacy. Spaces for Knowledge Production

As with other spaces for interpretation of texts and tradition, there are also other interlocutors on the scene who represent different aspects of gender and generation than usually among the dominating voices within the established religious institutions. A focal point in this lecture will be not so much on new messages but on the means and tools for mediation in a landscape of alternative voices. Who can claim legitimate religious knowledge, and in what situations? What historical imaginaries are deemed to be relevant for contemporary exegesis?

21.11.2024 – 16:15-17:45 at Lossi 3-117, Tartu

Between Transmit and Transform. Taking Ritual Responsibilities

Alternative forms for gatherings, teaching, and learning by necessity affect the mode of religious practices. For those who take ritual responsibilities in smaller piety communities, negotiations are essential for the legitimacy of both leaders and practices, as well as for keeping up the continuation of the activities. Also, in this lecture, a key theme will be the rhetorical entanglement of claims of historical lines and assurance of meeting today’s challenges when attracting new participants.

Catharina Raudvere is a professor of the History of Religions at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has published the monograph The Book and the Roses. Sufi Women, Visibility, and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul (2003) and edited Contested Memories and the Demands of the Past. History Cultures in the Modern Muslim World (2016), Nostalgia – Loss and Creativity. Political and Cultural Representations of the Past in South-East Europe (2018) and Neo-Ottoman Imaginaries in Contemporary Turkey. Gendered Discourses, Agencies, and Visions (with Petek Onur 2022). Raudvere has together with Zilka Spahić-Šiljak produced the educational film Bosnian Muslim Women’s Rituals. Bulas Singing, Reciting and Teaching in Sarajevo (2016). Raudvere is PI for the Nordic network “Contemporary Muslim Lay Piety. Interpretations, Performance and Mobilization and PI for the research project “Pious Practices among Danish Muslims. Diversity, Devotion, and Aesthetics” 2023–2026.

Ivar Paulson lectures is a lecture series focuses on the most noteworthy topics, issues, and new developments in the contemporary study of religion. Ivar Paulson (1922-1966) was known for the wide range of peoples, religious beliefs and practices he was interested in and which he studied by combining a number of different research approaches. Similarly, Paulson’s lectures aim to highlight and bring together some of the more significant developments from various approaches and perspectives in the contemporary study of religion.

The lectures are supported by European Union

Paulson Lectures in the Study of Religion are organized by the Estonian Society for the Study
of Religions in cooperation with the School of Theology and Religious Studies of the
University of Tartu. This year the lectures will be held by Kocku von Stuckrad who is
widely known scholar of Western Esotericism, discursive study of religion as well as many
other issues related to the history of religion, science, and philosophy in Europe and North
America.

Dates and location:
07.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114: The Colonial Invention of Animism
08.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114: European Animisms Today
09.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114: The Relational Turn and the Study of Religion

Detailed descriptions of the lectures:
The Colonial Invention of Animism
07.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114
The concept of animism is deeply rooted in colonial structures. Introduced by the British
anthropologist Edward B. Tylor (1871) as the belief in the animation of nature and the
existence of spirits, colonial religious studies imagined animism as a ‘failed ontology.’ This
‘primitive religion’ could be found outside of Europe, mainly in Indigenous, Buddhist, and
Hindu traditions, but also in segments of European societies that seemed to be untouched by
the project of rational, disenchanted European modernity. The lecture situates the early
discourse on animism in an ambiguous European setting that is torn between fascination and
rejection of animism and related trends in religion and philosophy.

European Animisms Today
08.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114

While postcolonial critique resulted in a rejection of the concept of animism in most
academic settings, since the 1980s, the term has gained a lot of traction in new religious and
spiritual movements, first in North America and then in Europe. Particularly in nature-based
spiritualities such as paganism or shamanism, animism became a positive identity marker for
many people, including environmental activists and artists. Scholars, too, revisited the
concept of animism and suggested new interpretations that look at animism as a relational
approach to the more-than-human world. The lecture describes these developments as a
general societal change, which involves ‘discourse communities’ formed by scholars,
practitioners, artists, and other actors.

The Relational Turn and the Study of Religion
09.11.2023 – 16:15-17:45 at Jakobi 2-114
The academic and popular work on the concept of animism is clearly linked to a broader
change that characterizes European and North American intellectual culture today. The new
scholarly interpretations of animism resonate with the ‘relational turn’ across academic
disciplines, the arts, and politics. Taking seriously the relationality, entanglement, and
situatedness of our knowledges is key for the study of religion as well. As it turns out, the
acknowledgment of animism as a European tradition may even contribute to attempts at
decolonization and de-Westernization. Against this background, the lecture formulates a few
programmatic ideas for the study of religion in the 21st century.

Kocku von Stuckrad is a professor of religious studies at the University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. He has published extensively on topics related to the history of religion, science,
and philosophy in Europe and North America. Using a discursive approach to religion, he has
worked particularly on nature-based and esoteric spiritualities as influential currents in
European tradition. His most recent book is A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North
America from 1870 to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2021).

Ivar Paulson lectures is a lecture series organized by the Estonian Society for the Study of
Religions that focus on the most noteworthy topics, issues and new developments in the
contemporary study of religion. Ivar Paulson (1922-1966) was known for the wide range of
peoples, religious beliefs and practices he was interested in and which he studied by
combining a number of different research approaches. Similarly, Paulson lectures aim to
highlight and bring together some of the more significant developments from various
approaches and perspectives in the contemporary study of religion.

In cooperation with the University of Tartu the Estonian Society for the Study of Religions is organizing the first Ivar Paulson lectures in the study of religion. This year the lectures will be held by the well-known scholar of Indian Tantra, Paolo E. Rosati. He is a distinguished scholar of Indian Tantra, in particular of its historical development in the wider social, cultural and religious context.

Dates and location:

02.11.2022 – 16:15-17:45 at Ülikooli 18-139: Tantra and Beyond

03.11.2022 – 16:15-17:45 at Ülikooli 18-139: The Cult of the Goddess Kāmākhyā (Assam)

04.11.2022 – 14:15-15:45 at Ülikooli 18-139: Blood, Sex, and Magic: The Power of the Yonipīṭha at Kāmākhyā

Detailed descriptions of the lectures can be found below:

Tantra and Beyond

02.11.2022 – 16:15-17:45 at Ülikooli 18-139

This lecture is a short introduction to Tantra as a religious phenomenon related not only to the Sanskritic élite and its textual production (such as, e.g., the highly philosophical Kashmiri Śivaism and its non-dualistic view of the universe) but also to the cross-cultural dialectic between Brahmanism and non-mainstream religions, such as tribal and folk traditions. After an analysis of the proposed definitions of Tantra in the history of the studies, the characteristics of Tantra will be point out in order to explain the problematic identification of Tantra as an univocal category because the extreme fluidity of its elements. Hence, also a differentiation between left-hand and right-hand or soft-core and hard-core Tantra emerges as a flawed attempt of classification. Finally, the controversial issue regarding the ‘birth’ of Tantra will be discussed highlighting the possibility of a multiple origin of what we call Tantra.

The Cult of the Goddess Kāmākhyā (Assam)

03.11.2022 – 16:15-17:45 at Ülikooli 18-139

The mythology of the goddess Kāmākhyā was introduced in the early medieval Kālikāpurāṇa (ninth–eleventh century CE), a Śākta text that linked the yoni of Satī to the Assamese goddess Kāmākhyā. This lecture will analyse the medieval and pre-modern Purāṇas and Tantras compiled in northeastern India—focusing on their mythological accounts of the cosmogony of the yoni-pīṭha—in order to outline the intersection of Kaula-Tantra and Purāṇic elements in the formation of the Goddess’s cult at Kāmākhyā.

Blood, Sex, and Magic: The Power of the Yonipīṭha at Kāmākhyā

04.11.2022 – 14:15-15:45 at Ülikooli 18-139

This lecture explores the connection between Tantra and the magic tradition of Nīlācala in Assam in order to explain the encounter between Brahmanism and magic. First, the doctrinal, ritual, and mythical background of the cult of the Goddess Kāmākhyā, whose roots go back to the esoteric sexual path of Kaula Tantra praxis will be discussed. Having traced the history to this path, which around the 10th century switched from blood sacrifice to a mystic-erotic ritual centred on the yoni-pūjā (worship of the vulva), homologizing blood offerings and erotic rituals focusing on the human body as a source of sexual fluids necessary to obtain such supernatural accomplishments (siddhis), this lecture then examines the concept of siddhi as a ‘magical power’ that can be acquired only by those belonging to the kula (clan), the only ones who know the yoni’s secret (the restricted transmission of siddhis over kula’s generations being a complement to the ideology of blood sacrifice). Finally, it considers the intersection of indigenous traditions and Brahmanical ritual praxis in Assam as the source of the peculiar cult of the yoni of Kāmākhyā. From this discussion, Assamese Tantra emerges as a religious phenomenon that crosses socio-cultural boundaries and encompasses apparently irreconcilable categories

Paolo E. Rosati is an independent scholar based in Rome (Italy). He obtained a PhD in ‘Asian and African Studies’ (South Asian Section) from Sapienza University of Rome (2017). Since 2016 he has regularly published articles on the yoni cult at Kāmākhyā in peer-reviewed journals and collective volumes. His publications include a double special issue on Tantra for Religions of South Asia (vol. 14, nos. 1–2) and a volume (coedited with Andrea Acri) entitled, Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia: Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from the Margins (Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions). Actually, he is editing an upcoming volume Magic, the Supernatural, and Danger across Pre-Modern and Modern Monsoon Asia. Paolo’s main field of research is the medieval and pre-modern development of Assamese Tantra, although nowadays his research’s focus is expanding to the intersection of Tantra, magic, gender, and memory in the modern period.

Ivar Paulson lectures focus on the most noteworthy topics, issues and new developments in the contemporary study of religion. Ivar Paulson (1922-1966) was known for the wide range of peoples, religious beliefs and practices he was interested in and which he studied by combining a number of different research approaches. Similarly, Paulson lectures aim to highlight and bring together some of the more significant developments from various approaches and perspectives in the contemporary study of religion.