CALL 01.05.2020: Matters of Magic between Archaeology, Anthropology, and History - Zalău (Romania)
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 01/05/2020
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 20-21-22/11/2020
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: History and Art Museum of Zalău (Romania)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Ágota Ábrán (PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology); Dan Deac (PhD in Ancient History)
INFO: abran.agota@outlook.com; dandeac12@gmail.com
In this interdisciplinary conference between archaeology, history, and anthropology we aim to investigate ‘matters of magic’, both in the sense of untangling the vagueness of the concept of magic and in the understanding of its materiality. Here, we use magic as an analytical concept rather than an empirical one and thus through magic we understand a whole range of religious and spiritual practices, ancient, old, and new. The use of the term magic aims at focusing on the materiality and practice of religious and spiritual beliefs and therefore is an attempt from the point of view of anthropology and history to learn from the very material focus of archaeology. At the same time, we wish to convey the social and historical embeddedness of such practices.
In archaeology, modern scholars have so far impassibly and isochronally used the term magic ambiguously in order to encompass a series of processes that span from divination to healing practices or other similar practice known from Antiquity. Consequently, a new sub-discipline emerged as a component of the study of religions, broadly defined as ‘ancient magic’ which still desires proper definition and methodological approaches, although David Frankfurter`s edited Guide to Ancient Magic (Leiden-Boston 2019) has been pivotal in setting the path for a better contemporaneous understanding of ‘ancient magic’.
Similarly, the term magic in anthropology has been vaguely defined and often used to mark the ‘Other’, to freeze both non-Western subjects or the West’s internal ‘Others’ in premodern times, the term having been often ‘employed as a counterpoint to liberal understandings of modernity’s rational progress’, especially as magic has been construed as threatening (see Greenwood 2009 or Federici 2004). However, we wish to employ a more symmetrical approach between magical and other human practices (similar to Bloor’s Principles of Symmetry) and to focus on how such practices make the world, not just how they view it.
This interdisciplinary conference wants to offer scholars the context in further enquiring about magic as an analytical concept across a long time-span, therefore we invite submissions that deal with magical practices from different geographical and historical periods: ancient forms of magic (new materiality of magic spanning from Prehistory to Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean world and the Near East), different traditional forms of magic, neo-pagan and neo-liberal forms of magic.
The language of the conference is English. The conference has no participation fee and the organisers will cover accommodation and meals (19-21 November 2020) but will not cover transportation.
Keynote speakers:
● Sorin Gog, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, sociology and anthropology of religions
● Sorin Nemeti, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca,Roman religion and ancient magic
Submission Guidelines:
To participate, please submit a 300-word abstract in English together with your name, discipline, and affiliation in one document to Dan Deac, dandeac12@gmail.com for archaeology and ancient history and Agota Abran, abran.agota@outlook.com for anthropology and modern history with the subject: Matters of Magic Conference Submission.
Submission Deadline: 1 May 2020
Notification of Acceptance: 1 June 2020