The TORCH Long History of Identity, Ethnicity, and Nationhood network are hosting a two day conference on ‘And you shall be unto me a Kingdom of Priests, a Holy Nation’: Chosen Peoples from the Bible to Daesh'.
Programme
Monday 20 June, Ertegun House
9.15 Registration & Coffee
9:45 Opening Remarks from Ilya Afanasyev & Nicholas Matheou (University of Oxford)
10.00 1st Keynote Lecture
Chair: Lydia Wilson (University of Oxford)
Charlie Winter (Georgia State University, Alabama) Islamic State: The Cynic’s Utopia
11.00 Coffee Break
11.30 Session 1 Chair: Bryan Ward-Perkins (University of Oxford)
Anna Sapir Abulafia (University of Oxford) Jacob and Esau and the Interplay of Jewish and Christian Identities in the Middle Ages
Gerde Heydemann (Freie Universität Berlin) The populus Dei and the law: Biblical models in Carolingian exegesis and legislation
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 2 Chair: Elisabeth Bolorinos Allard (University of Oxford)
Rodrigo García-Velasco (University of Cambridge) 'Soleima Alcarmed cum meum filium Stephanum': language and ethnicity in the documents of the twelfth-century conquest of Muslim Iberia'
Yoland Rodríguez-Pérez (University of Amsterdam) King Salomon and the chosen people of Israel: Religion and identity in Early Modern Spain and the Low Countries
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 Session 3 Chair: Simon Yarrow (University of Birmingham)
Thomas Foerster (The Norwegian Institute in Rome) The Italians and the Germans in the Imperial Ideology of Godfrey of Viterbo
Yannis Stouraitis (Austrain Academy of Sciences, Vienna) New Romen's chosen people: the various faces of Byzantine exceptionalism
17.30 Coffee Break
18.00 2nd Keynote Lecture
Chair: Nicholas Matheou
Julia Bray (University of Oxford) Vexed Questions
19.15 Dinner for Speakers and Chairs at Somerville College
Tuesday 21st March, Lecture Room, 2nd Floor, Radcliffe Humanities Building
9.30 Session 4 Chair: Nicholas Matheou (University of Oxford)
Zara Pogossian (Ruhr-Universität-Bochum) Armenians as the People of God and New Israel in medieval sources
Nikoloz Aleksidze (University of Oxford) Political Theology of the Lot of the Mother of God and Identity Politics in Georgia
11.00 Coffee Break
11.30 Session 5 Chair: Ilya Afanasyev (University of Oxford)
Sophie-jung Kim (University of Cambridge) Discovering Indian Nationhood through Suffering and Ascetic Selfhood: A brief tour of Vivekananda's Ideas
Oded Steinberg (HUJI and Freie Universität Berlin) Conflicting Periodizations? The Construction of Biblical, Jewish and Zionist Time in pre-1948 historiography
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 6 Chair: Miles Larmer (University of Oxford)
Jim Bjork (King's College, London) Chosen Regions? Sub-National Religious Exceptionalism in Modern Europe
Andrea Grant (University of Cambridge) Exploring 'hidden dynamics' in Rwanda's post-genocide religious landscape: the problem of ethnicity
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 3rd Keynote Lecture
Chair: Arezou Azad (University of Birmingham)
Fred Donner (University of Chicago) The Concept of umma in early Islam
17.00 Wine Reception
The Long History of Identity, Ethnicity and Nationhood
Contact name: Ilya Afanasyev
Contact email: ilya.afanasyev@hertford.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all
Media:
The Role of Religion in Identity
The Concept of 'Umma' in Early Islam
