Catharina Raudvere - Seeing and Being Seen. Community Life Beyond the Established Institutions

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

Catharina Raudvere's lectures were organised 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.

Based on fieldwork materials from Turkey and Bosnia, this lecture will focus more 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.

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's lectures are a series that 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 he studied these by combining several 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.

Project "Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies" (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.

Video production: https://www.hdvideo.ee/