The Second Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life A CEDAR Affiliate Event

REMINDER: APPLICATION DEADLINE February 23 Conversion and the Boundaries of Community July 26 - August 8, 2015   Call for Fellows The 2015 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) will be devoted to the themeConversion and the Boundaries of Community. As with previous schools, it proceeds from the idea that religion and other forms of collective belonging are central for the life of both individuals and society, and that our religious communities are often those to which we devote our greatest loyalties.  In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas, moral beliefs and communal loyalties. The goal of the Summer School is to provide a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society.  Its focus is on religion as providing the fundamental terms of moral community and its aim is to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by “differences”. The Balkan Summer School takes up this very real challenge and tries to critically define differences, especially communal and religious differences between people as the starting point of a publically shared life. Its basic aim is to help participants realize their prejudices and question their taken-for-granted assumptions of the other through the construction of a safe social space of exploration and interaction that includes an innovative mixture of academic teaching, experiential field experience (practicums) and affective engagement with the challenges of “living together differently”. For centuries, the Balkans have been characterized by a diverse and complex mixture of religions, nations and ethnicities; of orthodoxies and heterodoxies, normative and subaltern beliefs, practices and ways of life. Within this mix, the issue of conversion has often been the touchstone of social tensions, violence and division – within and between ethnie, communities, and even families. The narratives of ‘forced conversion” have played a strong role in defining the identities of post-Ottoman nation-states in the Balkans. Contemporary conversions (to the so-called New Religious Movements, to and from Islam and Orthodoxy) as well as the phenomenon (in the Balkans and elsewhere) of the “Sunnification” of Islam all make conversion as contested a move today as in the past. Our 2015 summer school will explore the issue of conversion, (both religious and non-religious), in the Balkans and elsewhere. We will explore conversion in its legal, social, and religious aspects, as well as its place within families, as an aspect of gender identity and as a form of accommodating the power differentials in a given society. Inquiry into different forms of conversion as lived practice in the area of the Rhodope Mountains and the Thracian plain around the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv will serve as the sharp lens of our inquiry. Ultimately, however we shall be focusing on the experience of our own boundaries, preconceptions, lived practices, prejudices and preconceptions – to better appreciate how to live with difference rather than deny, trivialize or abrogate it. Drawing on over twelve years experience of  CEDAR-Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion (www.CEDARnetwork.org) the BSSRPL seeks to bring together fellows from different walks of life and different religious and confessional communities, (as well as those who define themselves as members of no such communities and have no religious identities) to explore these themes together, in conditions of mutual respect and recognition. We look forward to an enriching mix of post-graduate students, professors, NGO leaders, journalists, religious leaders, policy analysts, and teachers from the area of the Balkans, Europe and beyond to join us for the two weeks of the school. The BSSRPL combines more traditional academic lectures with field-work, practical, experiential learning and more affectively orientated forms of group learning; in an innovative approach to learning that goes far beyond the purely cognitive. The successful candidates will be expected to fund their own transportation to Sofia, Bulgaria. The BSSRPL maintains a needs-based tuition policy and bursaries are available. Deadline for Applications is February 23, 2015. Application material can be found at: http://logos.uni-plovdiv.net/en/web/logos.etn/bssrpl For program questions, contact Desislava Dimitrova at: desislavadimitrova@uni-plovdiv.net.

The 2013 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) on Syncretic Societies – Bridging Traditions and Modernity

The organizers of the 2013 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) on Syncretic Societies – Bridging Traditions and Modernity? proceed from the idea that religion and religious identities are central for the life of both individuals and society, and that our religious communities are often those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas, moral beliefs and communal loyalties.

The goal of the Summer School is to provide a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its focus is on religion as a basic identification marker of the individual and society, and its aim is to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by "differences".

The Balkan Summer School takes up this very real challenge and tries to critically define differences,especially communal and religious differences between people as the starting point of a publically shared life.Its basic aim is to help participants realize their prejudices and question their taken-for-granted assumptions of the other through the construction of a safe social space of exploration and interaction that includes an innovative mixture of academic teaching, experiential field experience (practicums) and affective engagement with the challenges of "living together differently".

For centuries, if not millennia, the Balkans have been characterized by a diverse and complex mixture of religions, nations and ethnicities; of orthodoxies and heterodoxies, normative and subaltern beliefs, practices and ways of life. From medieval Bogomiles, to early modern Sabbateans, contemporary Bektashi, to the cult of Dionysius in antiquity – the Balkans has been a site of religious contestation and innovation. Not surprisingly, it has also been a cauldron of different forms of religious syncretism, with fractal boundaries between communities and a strong "lived" or practical tolerance of shared practices (rather than of homogenous beliefs). As in many other global spaces, this culture came under the assault of modern ideological agendas (nationalism, communism, fascism, liberal-secularism, etc.) with serious consequences for the practices of shared life that had characterized more traditional communal life-worlds.

Our 2013 summer school will explore the issue of religious syncretism (in the Balkans and elsewhere), as a unique form of accommodating difference (in law, community organization, religious practice, family obligations, definitions of gender, etc.). Inquiry into religious syncretism as lived practice in the area of the Rhodope Mountains and the Thracian plain around the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv will thus serve as the sharp lens of our inquiry. Ultimately, however we shall be focusing on the experience of our own boundaries, preconceptions, lived practices, prejudices and preconceptions – to better appreciate how to live with difference rather than deny, trivialize or abrogate it.

Drawing on over ten years experience of the International Summer School on Religion and Public Life, the BSSRPL seeks to bring together some 30 fellows from different walks of life and different religious and confessional communities, (as well as those who define themselves as members of no such communities and have no religious identities) to explore these themes together, in conditions of mutual respect and recognition. We look forward to an enriching mix of post-graduate students, professors, NGO leaders, journalists, religious leaders, policy analysts, and teachers from the area of the Balkans, Europe and beyond to join us for the two weeks of the school.

As noted above, the BSSRPL combines more traditional academic lectures with field-work, practical, experiential learning and more affectively orientated forms of group learning; in a innovative approach to learning that goes far beyond the purely cognitive. In the past, schools have been held in Bosnia&Herzegovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, United Kingdom, and USA. The BSSRPL draws, in personnel, pedagogical principles and orientations from these past experiences and is organized in affiliation with the ISSRPL, as well with the Equator Peace Academy that is run out of the Uganda Martyrs University and which is holding its first school in Uganda and Rwanda in December 2012 devoted to Whole Community? Memory, Conflict and Tradition.

Please join us this August in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Application forms can be downloaded and further information attained at:

http://uni-plovdiv.bg/logos/site.jsp?ln=2&id=1022

Eating Together The Hidden Story of the International Summer School on Religion and Public Life

http://practicalmattersjournal.org/issue/5/centerpieces/eating-together

The 2011 ISSRPL

The 2011 ISSRPL was held in Bulgaria and was devoted to the different types of margins that we encounter in our social life. We looked at people, places, families, ethnicities, religions and practices, all from the perspective of our received notions of society’s centers and its margins. Together we explored issues of poverty and its role in the marginalization of certain populations. Through our unique combination of lectures and more experiential learning, we studied the situation of the Roma in the areas we visited, as well as of the Bulgarian Pomaks (ethnic Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman period), Catholic and Jewish communities in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and both traditional and emergent Muslim communities (and identities). The international nature of our group and pedagogy provided a crucial comparative perspective on these issues and their attendant challenges. more

Reflections on the 2011 ISSRPL

A Roman Catholic priest from Uganda, a Jewish professor of sociology and religion from the US, a Muslim woman from Palestine with a degree in Peace Studies, a Protestant social activist from Indonesia, and an atheist from Russia walk into an Orthodox Christian monastery in Bulgaria built by a Muslim man whose ill wife was healed by Christian holy water and which houses a miraculous icon that grants fertility to the Muslim and Christian women who come to pray before it. No, this is not the beginning of a cruel joke. This actually happened just a few days ago...more

Review at the Boston University website about the summer school

http://www.bu.edu/cura/henry-luce-foundation-funding/issrpl-2/

A CONTENTIOUS WORLD

http://www.bu.edu/cas/magazine/spring11/seligman/index.shtml

Photos from 2011 School

The Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life provides a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its goals are to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas, moral beliefs and communal loyalties. Its focus is on religion, as our religious identities are our most exclusive and our religious communities are those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together. The school takes these very real, critical and defining differences, especially communal and religious differences between people, as the starting point of a publically shared life. 


BSSRPL works as a consortium together with the International Summer School on Religion and Public Life (www.issrpl.org) whose program will be held in Indonesia from 3-17^th July 2012 http://www.issrpl.org/programs/application.html