Workshop Religion & Cultivation (28-30 Sep 2021)

Organized by Hans Olsson (University of Copenhagen) & James Bielo (Miami University)

Program 28-30 Sep (Online)

28 Sep

• 5-7pm Public Keynote lecture: Sarah McFarland Taylor (Northwestern University), Marketing Earth Exodus: Apocalyptic “New Earth” Rhetoric and Perceived Planetary Obsolescence in Mars Colonization Promotional Messaging

29 Sep Session I

• 4pm Introducing the workshop: Hans Olsson (University of Copenhagen), James Bielo (Miami University)
• 4:30 Hans Olsson (University of Copenhagen) “Cultivating ’Black Gold’: Compost, order and labour within Evangelical/Charismatic Christianity in South Africa”
• 5:30 Fran Markowitz (University of Ben-Gurion University of Negev) “’Here I Can Like Watermelon’: Culinary Redemption among the African Hebrew Israelites” (co-authored with Nir Avieli)
• 6:30 Lena Roos (Södertörn’s University) “The gardens of Martin Luther and Catharina von Bora: Gardening in metaphor and practice during the early Reformation”
• 7:30 Summing up Day 1

30 Sep Session II

• 4pm Gretel Van Wieren (Michigan State University) “Historical Precursors to Views of Soil as Sacred Religion in North America”
• 5pm Chika Watanabe (Manchester University) “Imperialist Multispecies Aspirations: Cultivating People and Microbes between Japan and Myanmar.”
• 6pm Concluding session with response from Sarah McFarland Taylor
• 6:30pm Discussion for ways forward

The event is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 843798