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Religiographies

Open-access and peer-reviewed journal, curated by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Religiographies is dedicated to the study of religious phenomena, fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and psychologists. Mysticism, esotericism, and spirituality are the three main themes of the journal, which are explored within their historical and cultural contexts, challenging traditional categories of religion. The heterographie section, dedicated to artistic and visual works, expands the understanding of the phenomena discussed.

Aims and Scope

Religiographies is an open-access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal dedicated to the field of religious studies and published under the auspices of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Since 2025, it has been recognised by ANVUR (the agency of the Ministry of Education) as a scientific journal for Area 11 (Historical, Philosophical, Pedagogical and Psychological Studies); Religiographies wishes to foster an interdisciplinary approach to religious phenomena, promoting dialogue between historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, philosophers, and psychologists.

We aim at promoting an anthropological history and at the same time a socio-anthropology with a strong historical emphasis, intending to avoid both socio-anthropological presentism and history only focused on ideas and institutions, while ignoring materiality, emotions, everyday lives.

We encourage at deconstructing and challenging categories (including the very word “religion”) not as a theoretical exercise, a proof of concept, but as a practice, showing with fieldwork data, the porosity and frailty of our categories.

We aim at discussing those topics that are often neglected by social and human sciences – such as mysticism, esotericism, spirituality – which, in the words of Michel de Certeau, “haunt scientific epistemology”. Our aim is not to create another journal on alternative spiritualities, but to bring these themes back into mainstream discussions of religious and cultural phenomena.

Finally, with the concept of heterographies– we intend to give space to other forms of representations, such as photography, comics, video, and artwork. These other languages will allow contributors – scholars and artists – to explore dimensions beyond the social sciences frame of objectiveness and coherence. This section, called heterographies, is not strictly scientific: it will not be peer-reviewed, but will receive feedback from the editors and invited commentators.

We invite submission on all religious phenomena, with a special focus on:

comparative approaches;
cultural transfers: acculturation, appropriation, imagination;
continuities and discontinuities between religious discourses and everyday life practices;
transhistorical perspective, stressing the connections between old and new trends;
liminal phenomena between the secular and the religious;
the relationship with alterity, understood not only as religious, but also in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity;
phenomenology of the religious body: perceptions, emotions, sensations and construction of the body;
epistemological and methodological debates about the transferability and translatability of religious studies categories.

Editorial board

Editor-in-chief

Francesco Piraino, Fondazione Giorgio Cini / Harvard Divinity School

Editors

Mark Sedgwick , University of Aarhus

Dionigi Albera, CNRS-IDEMEC

Assistant editors

Elena Bernardinello, Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Eva Salviato, Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Copy editor and proofreader

Anna Fitzgerald

Book Reviews

Valentina Gaddi, Université de Montréal

Editorial board

Stefano Allievi, University of Padua

Egil Asprem, University of Stockholm

Katell Berthelot, CNRS–Aix-Marseille University

Francesco Cerchiaro, Radboud University

Andrea De Antoni, University of Kyoto

John Eade, University of Roehampton

Diana Espírito Santo, Universidad Catholica de Chile

Fabrizio Ferrari, University of Padua

Mattia Fumanti , University of St. Andrews

Giuseppe Giordan, University of Padua

Alberta Giorgi, University of Bergamo

Boaz Huss, Ben Gurion University

Salvatore La Mendola, University of Padua

Marco Pasi, University of Amsterdam

Enzo Pace, University of Padua

Stefania Palmisano, University of Turin

Vadim Putzu, Missouri State University

Khalid Razzhali, University of Padua

Antonio Rigopoulos, University of Ca’ Foscari

Armando Salvatore, University of McGill

Chiara Tommasi, University of Pisa

Fabio Vicini, University of Verona

Religiographies vol.4

Religiographies vol.4 n.1 (2025)

Religiographies vol.3

Religiographies vol.3 n.2 (2024)

Religiographies vol.3 n.1 (2024)

Religiographies vol.2

Religiographies vol.2 n.2 (2023)

Religiographies vol.2 n.1 (2023)

Religiographies vol.1

Religiographies vol.1 n.1 (2022)

Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity Conscientious Objection and Contestation of Civil Norms

Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity

Conscientious Objection and Contestation of Civil Norms

Edited By Claude Proeschel, David Koussens, Francesco Piraino

September 26, 2022 Forthcoming by Routledge

Religion, Law and the Politics of Ethical Diversity (routledge.com)

This book provides a multidisciplinary and comparative look at the contemporary phenomenon of conscientious objection or contestation in the name of religion and examines the key issues that emerge in terms of citizenship and democracy. These are analysed by looking at the different ways of challenging or contesting a legal obligation on the grounds of religious beliefs and convictions.

The authors focus on the meaning of conscientious objection which asserts the legitimacy of convictions – in particular religious convictions – in determining the personal or collective relevance of the law and of public action. The book begins by examining the main theoretical issues underlying conscientious objection, exploring the implications of the protection of freedom of conscience, the place of religion in the secular public sphere and the recognition and respect of ethical pluralism in society. It then focuses on the question of exemptions and contestations of civil norms, using a multidisciplinary approach to highlight the multiple and diverse issues surrounding them, as well as the motives behind them.

This book will be of great interest to scholars, specialists and graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are interested in issues of religious diversity. Researchers and policymakers in think-tanks, NGOs and government units will find the volume useful in identifying key issues in understanding the phenomenon of conscientious objection and its implications in managing ethical diversity in contemporary societies.

For more information

Invisible Lines

This travelling advanced course for young artists starts from a paradox: how do you draw the invisible?
Invisible Lines (www.invisiblelines.eu) has been developed around this question.

The educational project for young comic-book artists and illustrators from the European Union has been conceived by the
Fondazione Giorgio Cini Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities with the
consultancy of Matteo Stefanelli and in partnership with three first-rate European players in the field of
illustration, the graphic novel and comics: the Hamelin Associazione Culturale (Italy), the publishers Baobab
Books (Czech Republic), specialized in children’s books, and Central Vapeur (France), an association bringing
together professionals from the worlds of publishing, the visual arts and education.

Invisible Lines will enable 12 young artists, selected through an international call for applications (see
details on www.invisiblelines.eu) to go on a two-year course that is also a journey through Europe and various
artistic practices. Three workshops in Italy, the Czech Republic and France will be led by three major artists:
Stefano Ricci, Juraj Horváth and Yvan Alagbé.

The call for applications on www.invisiblelines.eu is open from 5 October to 10 December 2020.
To find out more about the project and how to take part, please visit www.invisiblelines.eu

Download the call for artists

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino

London, Palgrave

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030617875

Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.

INVISIBLE LINES

How do you draw the invisible?

How to draw the feeling of belonging to a community of people and the people that live on the fringes of our society?

Invisible Lines develops around those questions, it’s a travelling training project that encourages young talents in comics and in illustrations to overcome this paradox enhancing visibility to these hidden realities.

The common thread of this project is the concept of invisibility. In a society characterized by the overproduction of images, it was considered essential to explore the inner dimensions of image production, such as subjectivity, marginality and spirituality. The importance of the invisible can be grasped in spiritual and religious phenomena , often regarded as destined to disappear in the contemporary era, but which today find new strength and new spaces. Invisible is paradoxically the migrant and the refugee, at the center of the representations of the media and yet rarely represented with his own history and voice. The invisible is also captured in many abandoned places that are scattered throughout Europe, because of an ever-changing urban landscape.

This two-year international project is co-found by the Creative Europe program of the European Union and developed by Fondazione Giorgio Cini; Central Vapeur (France); Hamelin Associazione Culturale (Italy); Baobab&Gplusg s.r.o. (Czech Republic).

The deadline to send the application and the portfolio is 31 December 2020.

For more information about how to apply visit: www.invisiblelines.eu

Download the call for artists

Eyes on music: Projects on visual ethnomusicology. 2020 Edition

Applications

Eyes on Music: Visual Ethnomusicology Projects. 2020 Edition

“Eyes on Music” is the title of a series of projects on documentation and audiovisual production in ethnomusicological studies set up by the IISMC in 2018 and coordinated by Giovanni Giuriati, Marco Lutzu, Claudio Rizzoni and Simone Tarsitani.

The series has been conceived starting from the realisation of the increasingly predominant role played by audiovisual recordings in fieldwork as well as in the production of documents and their diffusion. The camera has now replaced the tape-recorder in most documentation activities and digital technology has made high-quality audiovisual documents accessible for archiving, analysis and publication purposes. Films are used by ethnomusicologists not only for the production of documentaries, but also for popularising, teaching, and the creation of multimedia archives. This great proliferation of audiovisual technologies has not been accompanied, however, by adequate training of researchers.

In the universities, the small number of teachers and the limited resources mean that, in most cases, fieldwork methodologies and in particular techniques for production, editing and analysis of audiovisual products are not taught in a satisfactory manner.

In 2020 the project will again have three distinct but complementary parts:

1) An annual research scholarship of 5,000 euros to be awarded to a young researcher to make a audiovisual documentary on an ethnomusicological theme in memory of Diego Carpitella. Projects received by means of a call for applications will be judged by a panel of three experts. The winner will undertake to make the documentary, which will be screened publicly in Venice the following year. A copy of the material produced during the making of the film will remain in the IISMC Archive.

New deadline for application: 30 April 2020

DOWNLOAD CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

DOWNLOAD APPLICATION FORM

2) A workshop in the field of visual ethnomusicology. For a week, two experts will hold an intensive workshop with a selected number of participants on a relevant topic of audiovisual documentation in ethnomusicology (e.g. audiovisual documentation of fieldwork, documentaries, video documentation for analytical purposes, visual representation of analysis and post-production). An integral part of the workshop will be the documentation of a musical event organised by the IISMC in the same week. The participants (a maximum of ten) selected through a call for applications will be offered accommodation in Fondazione Cini’s Vittore Branca Center and lunches.

New deadline for application: 30 April 2020

DOWNLOAD CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

DOWNLOAD APPLICATION FORM

3) Short festival of films and multimedia products in the field of ethnomusicology. The second edition of the festival will be dedicated to the work of Diego Carpitella, a fundamental point of reference for those involved in visual ethnomusicology in Italy and maker of important documentaries on oral tradition Italian music. During the two days of the festival, films and audiovisual products made by Carpitella will be shown, as well as video material related to his teaching activities on IISMC courses.

INFO

Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati
musica.comparata@cini.it

+39 041 2710357

Call for papers Religious dimensions of nationalism: Interdisciplinary perspectives

Nationalism and religion have become closely entangled in the last two centuries. Nationalism in fact, can be easily associated with “political religion”, charismatic leadership, forms of prophetism, messianism, millennialism, and more generally mysticism, esotericism and alternative spirituality. The old religious concept of a divine covenant with a “chosen people” takes new shapes in nationalist, but also imperialist and colonialist, discourses. The spread of nationalism on a global scale, and its role in the decolonisation process, is also often far from having a purely political or secular dimension, and indeed alliances with religious fundamentalism are now a prominent feature.

This entangled relationship warrants a fresh focus on the relationship between nationalism and religion, which remains relatively inconspicuous in the field of nationalist studies. This conference aims at bringing together scholars coming from different disciplines who are interested in this relationship. We would like to have papers focusing on the modern and contemporary period from a global perspective, but we would also welcome contributions on earlier periods that would problematise modernist concepts of nationalism.

Downlaod Call fo papers CfP Nationalism

Deadline 1 June 2020

Symposium. Religious dimensions of nationalism: Interdisciplinary perspectives

The relationship between nationalism and religion is characterised by strong tension due to the universalist tendencies present in many religions, which challenge collective identities based on ethnic or cultural divisions. Moreover, modernist interpretations of nationalism have insisted on the close association between nationalism and secularisation. In recent years, however, these perspectives have become as problematic as the concept of secularisation itself, because they fail to grasp that religion, far from dying out in modern societies, has simply gone through a series of changes, such as individualisation and privatisation, on one hand, and new forms of public presence, on the other. Nationalism can easily be associated with forms of prophetism, messianism, millenarianism and, more generally, mysticism, esotericism and alternative spiritualities. The old religious concept of a divine covenant with a “chosen people” has taken new forms in nationalist but also imperialist and colonialist discourses. The study of the relationship between nationalism and religion has been relatively neglected and has not yet received due attention in the specific field of nationalist studies. The conference will bring together scholars from different disciplines who are interested in this relationship.

The symposium is curated and organized by the Center for Comparative Studies of Civilization and Spiritualities, directed by Francesco Piraino, in collaboration with Joep Leerssen and Marco Pasi (University of Amsterdam).

Download the Program CINI Nationalism

For information related to registrations write to civilta.comparate@cini.it

Masterclass in Venice with Alex Majoli

Magnum Photos and the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities at Fondazione Giorgio Cini are inviting applications for the second workshop organized on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, offering participants the opportunity to work on their projects in an immersive and intimate group setting. Join Magnum photographer Alex Majoli for an intense three-day of honest discussions about photography, during which he will talk at large about his work, give you critical feedback about your practice and explain in details how he has developed his technique to work on his latest body of work “Scene“.

For more information, please visit: https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/events/events/masterclass-with-alex-majoli/

Call for Masterclass with Alex Majoli and Erik Kessels

21-22-23 April 2020 Fondazone Giorgio Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore Venezia

Magnum Photos and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini are thrilled to launch applications for the second workshop organized on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, offering participants to work on their projects in an immersive and intimate group setting.


Deadline to apply is March 1, 2020, 23:59 UK time.

Download Cfpp Cini Magnum 2020 

For further information and sending the application:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/event/masterclass-with-alex-majoli-and-erik-kessels-in-venice/?fbclid=IwAR1SZbMV6U5-IeCaKhivd_YC1TOSectqQA4YjyTaA5BJZ7sxav31LIyRGRQ