410007 SE "Holy". Approaches to study devotion. From prehistory to the present (2023W)

What constitutes veneration? Admiration, worship, sanctity, exaltation. Veneration can be understood as a process or as a practice, while holiness first designates a state. Holiness, however, loses meaning without veneration, without practice, but it requires representation and description, rituals, and rites, in order to produce and perceive it (to make it true). These practices are historical, their form transforms in space and time, in relation to social spheres such as religion, culture, and politics, to functions, interests, and emotions associated with them.
Research on veneration of saints and pilgrimages has shown their importance for piety in Catholicism; other studies have been devoted to the connection between nation and veneration, especially in the national movements of the nineteenth century, or to the transnationality of figures of saints. That veneration also plays a role in politics shows the importance not only of credibility but also of admiration of national heroes, resistance fighters, or revolutionaries. Whether the admiration of stars in sports and pop culture or the veneration of objects corresponds to the sanctity of religious heroines has been thought about in sociological and ethnological perspectives.
Veneration therefore plays a role in very different historical and cultural contexts and can be studied with different objectives. In the seminar we want to address the meaning of sanctity/veneration in your respective thesis projects. We will discuss examples of theoretical and conceptual approaches that have been used to investigate the culturality and historicity of holiness and veneration. The aim is to discuss the approaches in their respective scope and goals and to operationalize them for your doctoral thesis.