Description
The aim of this interdisciplinary workshop will be to explore the varied ways in which actors in the communist-era religious underground were able to transcend, transgress and traverse borders and boundaries. The phenomenon of the religious underground is emerging as an important new area of research for historians and anthropologists of religion in Central and Eastern Europe (see Kapaló and Povedák 2022; Șincan and Biliuță 2022) inspired by the desire to gain a more nuanced understanding of the lived experience of communities during communism and how in turn this has shaped the contemporary religious field in the region This workshop will bring together scholars from Romania and Moldova as well as invited speakers from Ukraine and Hungary to explore the ways in which communities such as Greek Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Orthodox dissenters, engaged in practices that required them to creatively transcend or challenge multiple types of boundaries or restrictions, whether imposed by the state or their own hierarchies. The themes that will be discussed will include the history and memory of religious travel across borders between Romania and other communist-bloc countries, inter-communal transmission of religious ideas and practices between underground communities, strategies for economic survival and the transgression of gender-based roles and duties amongst clandestine groups. In contrast to the attention that has been paid to the religious Cold War as a geopolitical, East-West phenomenon, the questions addressed by this workshop aim to contribute to a bottom-up, history from below approach to religion in communist Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Cold War opening up discussion about the agency and creativity of religions in social, cultural and economic spheres in Romania, Moldova and beyond. It is intended that the contributors to this workshop will explore theoretical and methodological questions emerging from a range of scholarly perspectives including history from below, anthropology of Christianity, vernacular and material religion, and the anthropology of borders.| Period | 4 Dec 2023 |
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| Event type | Workshop |
| Location | Bucharest, RomaniaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |