Republic of Letters: A Minority Perspective on Religious Change in an Interconnected (Ottoman) World
Abstract:
In this lecture, I will take a fresh look at the developments in the literary culture(s) of the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire. In line with my earlier work on this period, I hope to show how an integrated study of these literary cultures – which previously were often studied in isolation – helps to discern the outlines of a Republic of Letters that is not bound by confession or religion, or at least much less so than we tend to think. A study of this Republic of Letters takes us to a varied and interconnected literary world, which includes a wide range of genres – including the ‘strictly religious’ to what is clearly far removed from religious questions. In studying these genres and the way they travel within and outside of distinct ‘religious communities’ in turn helps us to refine how categories like ‘religion’ and ‘religious’ function in the context of the Middle East – be in the Medieval, Ottoman or modern and contemporary periods.
See:
Murre-van den Berg, Heleen (2020a), “Arabic and its Alternatives: Language and Religion in the Ottoman Empire and its Successor States.” In Arabic and its Alternatives: Religious Minorities and their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920-1950). Edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Karène Sanchez, Tijmen C. Baarda (Brill, series Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies; Leiden), 1-49. OA: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004423220. (see: https://www.ru.nl/english/people/murre-van-den-berg-h/)
Heleen Murre-van den Berg (PhD Leiden 1995) is Professor of Global Christianity and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies. From June 2015 to June 2021, she directed the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in Nijmegen. She published extensively on Christianity in the Middle East, especially on the Syriac/Assyrian traditions. Key publications include (with Karène Sanchez, and Tijmen C. Baarda) Arabic and its Alternatives: Religious Minorities and their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920-1950) (Brill, Leiden 2020), (with S.R. Goldstein-Sabbah, eds) Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East (Brill, Leiden, 2016) and Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500-1850) (Louvain: Peeters, 2015). In 2017, she was elected a member of the KNAW (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen) and she received the Hans Sigrist Prize of the University of Bern. In 2019, she was awarded an ERC-Advanced Grant for the research project ‘Rewriting Global Orthodoxy: Oriental Christians in Europe (1970-2020)’.