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Religion and Spirituality
Leader	Associate Professor Constant J. Mews Center for the Study of Religion and Theology, Monash University Constant.Mews@arts.monash.edu.au
Scope	This theme naturally overlaps with projects connected to other themes within the NEER framework. There are currently many different research projects being undertaken in Australia that relate to the study of religious practice and thought within Europe, from the time of Latin Antiquity, through the high medieval period to the period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such research can focus on the history of ideas, exploring the relationship between of religion and spirituality to literature, the arts, music, and to philosophical enquiry, while it can also consider their relationship between religion and culture, politics and society more broadly considered. The study of religion and spirituality provides an ideal vehicle for interdisciplinary research, embracing a wide range of disciplinary traditions. It also embraces research into the full range of religious cultural expression, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and folk or pagan that shaped Europe prior to the modern world.
Activities	August 2-4, 2006: Theme Symposium, "Communities of Learning, Religious Diversity, and the Written Record 1085-1453", Monash University. Convenors: Constant Mews, John O Ward and Juanitia Ruys. Report. This conference explores the notion that manuscript books between the late eleventh and mid fifteenth centuries were the product not just of individual scholars, but of a range of different communities of learning, each with their own particular intellectual, political and religious character. Some manuscripts were the products of monastic communities, some were from urban schools or the University of Paris, other others might emanate from a courtly environment. The conference takes as its chronological time frame the period from the capture of Toledo by Latin Christians in 1085, when so much Islamic and Jewish scholarship first became accessible to the Latin West to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks. The emphasis will be on the continuity of cultural creativity during these centuries, when the Latin West was able to benefit from the intellectual riches of both Moorish Spain and the Byzantine world. There will be a particular focus on the role of the University of Paris during this period, as well as on the transmission of music and the other natural sciences, alongside the study of the arts of language and of ethics. The emphasis will be on the range of communities involved in the transmission of learning, both within and outside the academy. July 18, 2006: "Spinoza, politico-theology and the notion of authority", St Paul's College, University of Sydney. Speakers: Moira Gatens (Sydney), Stephen Gaukroger (Sydney), Jonathan Israel (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton), Susan James (Birkbeck College, University of London), Theo Verbeek (Utrecht).

Last updated 15 Nov 2007 12:11
Location:  http://www.neer.arts.uwa.edu.au/page/3259
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