Programme
General schedule
Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| 8:00–9:00 Wake-up coffee | 8:00–9:00 Wake-up coffee | 8:00–9:00 Wake-up coffee |
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 2 | 9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 5 | 9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 7 | |
10:45–11:00 Break | 10:45–11:00 Break | 10:45–11:00 Break | |
12:00–14:00 | 11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 3 | 11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 6 | 11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 8 |
14:00–14:30 | 12:45–14:30 | 12:45–14:30 | 12:45–14:30 |
14:30–15:30 KEYNOTE 1 ECATERINA LUNG: ‘Shared beliefs? The Virgin Mary and the 626 CE Siege of Constantinople’ | 14:30–15:30 KEYNOTE 2 FRANCESCO PAOLO DE CEGLIA: ‘Criminals, saints and some vampires. | 14:30–15:30 Workshop: publishing with the ISCH (and any book presentations) | 14:30–15:30 KEYNOTE 3 JEAN-PIERRE CAVAILLÉ: ‘Popular Irreligion’ |
15:45–17:45 Parallel sessions 1 | 15:30–16:15 Coffee break | 15:30–16:15 Coffee break | 15:30–16:00 Closing of the conference |
17:45–19.00 Opening reception
| 16:15–18:15 Parallel sessions 4 | 16:15–17:30 | 17:00– Sightseeing tour |
| 18:30 ISCH PhDs and ECRs Aperitivo |
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| 20.00 Conference dinner at the restaurant “Locanda ai Portici” | (20:45 Turandot @ Arena) or 21:00– Sightseeing tour |
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Sessions schedule (final)
(Note: 1.1 – 1.5 are room numbers.)
Tuesday 2 August 2022
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
15:45–17:45 Parallel sessions 1 | Werewolves, magicians, false gods, and deadly doctors. Superstitious beliefs and scepticism in ancient Greek and Roman narratives(Organiser: Juha Isotalo) | “Eternity Politics”: institutionalization of Beliefs in Modern South-Eastern European Political Culture. Text, Image, Context(Organisers: Raluca Alexandrescu and Vladimir Creţulescu) | Philosophical and ideological grounds of belief and unbelief | Approaching the Changing Historical Culture of a Nation(Organiser: Jukka Kortti) | Perceptions of “race” and AIDS activism in Europe(Organiser: Nikolaos Papadogiannis; chair: Jodi Burkett) |
Wednesday 3 August 2022
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 2 | Beliefs and Unbeliefs in Narrative Cinema(Organiser: Noora Kallioniemi) | The material and visual culture of faith: objects and images, their usages and power in Ancient times I | The epidemic as a belief system: the cultural and political wars of the covid-19 pandemic in historical perspective | Beliefs on paper: Spreading knowledge with the press | The negotiation of religious beliefs and identities in the ancient and late antique Mediterranean I |
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 3 | The Nature of Belief: Environment and Religion in the Early Modern Republic of Venice(Organiser: Mattia Corso) | The material and visual culture of faith: objects and images, their usages and power in Ancient time II | Narratives of illness: knowledge, politics, and beliefs | Communicating reality: How media shaped knowledge and beliefs I | The negotiation of religious beliefs and identities in the ancient and late antique Mediterranean II |
16:15–18:15 Parallel sessions 4 | Believing in the Celts?(Organiser: Frédéric Armao) | The visual and material culture of beliefs in pre modern times | Emotions and faith | Communicating reality: How media shaped knowledge and beliefs II | The constraints of a violent life: experiences, beliefs and religion |
Thursday 4 August 2022
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 5 | Women Philosophers between Doubt and Belief: Tullia d’Aragona, Margaret Cavendish and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht(Organiser: Johanna Vernqvist) | Stereotypes and representations | Self-consciousness, faith and (self-) writing: an individual in manuscript tradition of Middle Ages and Modern period | The invention of tradition: the role of beliefs in constructing heritage | The long durée of supernatural narratives and practices |
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 6 | Religion, women and their representation | Contemporary discussion on religion | Collective Experiences Turning into Collective Belief. Socialist Generationsin Finnish Society from 1918 until 1970s(Organiser: Ulla Aatsinki) | Beliefs in the natural world and in non-human agency | The power of narrative: building and questioning myths in ancient times |
Friday 5 August 2022
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 7 | In the public eye: belief and reputation as a matter of public discussion | Objects of faith: relics and amulets from the early modern age to the contemporary world | Literary narratives of faith and truth | Narratives of Unbelief as Resistance to Doubt in a Transhistorical Perspective(Organiser: Ramón Soneira Martínez) | |
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 8 | Theory and methodology of cultural history | Words and the power of beliefs | Building identities with beliefs |
Panel composition (updated 30 July)
Note: presentations in blue are online
Note: The order of presentations inside each panel can be changed at the panelists' discretion.
TUESDAY 2 AUGUST 2022
15:45–17:45 Parallel sessions 1
Room 1.1: Werewolves, magicians, false gods, and deadly doctors. Superstitious beliefs and scepticism in ancient Greek and Roman narratives
● Isotalo: Werewolves at the Border. Beliefs on Neighbouring Communities in Herodotus and Pomponius Mela
● Kauppinen: Words have power. Language and beliefs as builders of agency in ancient Graeco-Roman magic
● Lukkari: The relationship of historical truth and religious beliefs in Polybius’ and Livy’s description of the “Scipionic legend”
● Vanhala: Popular beliefs about physicians in ancient Rome
Room 1.2: “Eternity Politics”: Institutionalization of Beliefs in Modern South-Eastern European Political Culture. Text, Image, Context
● Alexandrescu: “Every nation has an evangelical mission to fulfil on earth”. Revolution, God and the New “Politics of Eternity” in 19th Century South-Eastern Europe
● Creţulescu: Secular icons of the Nation: Quasi-Marial Personifications of Romania in 19th Century Romanian Painting
● Rizescu: Lingering Scientism and Palingenetic Modernism: Competing Right-wing Departures from Religious Traditionalism in Interwar Romania
● Sabău: The anti-modern sources of the discourse of the far-Right in interwar Romania
Room 1.3: Philosophical and ideological grounds of belief and unbelief
● Stogova: Public Knowledge between Scepticism and Disbelief: The Controversy of Nicholas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld
● Hörcher: Compensation theory and its political overtones in the Ritter School
● Okabe: Beliefs in democracy: The case of East Germany around 1960
● Mihaescu: Desacralizing the Moon, Mythologizing Spaceflight: the Reception of the Moon Landing in Communist Romania
Room 1.4: Approaching the Changing Historical Culture of a Nation
● Kortti: Introduction: Historical Culture and the Mediated Narratives of Nation
● Viita-aho: Changing national museums producing national identity and narratives of history
● Marti: ‘The reception of the Finnish National Museum`s exhibition “The Story of Finland”’
● Mähkä: Ice Hockey as Finnish Cultural History
Room 1.5: Perceptions of “race” and AIDS activism in Europe
● Broqua: Sequal and postcolonial minorities: an impossible convergence of struggles against AIDS?
● Love: Mutual Aid, Anti-Racism, and AIDS Activism in Italy
● Papadogiannis: Sex worker activists, AIDS and anti-racism in Berlin, 1980s-1990s
WEDNESDAY 3 AUGUST 2022
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 2
Room 1.1: Beliefs and Unbeliefs in Narrative Cinema
● Rosenholm: Sensational Death -The role of media in 1960s Finnish crime films
● Kallioniemi: Mental illness in the narrative of Finnish crime films in the 1960s
● Tiburcio Moreno: Occultism, Deviant Rituals and Modernity in Spanish Horror Cinema during the Late-Franco Dictatorship
Room 1.2: The material and visual culture of faith: objects and images, their usages and power in Ancient times I
● Krikona: Symbols of Faith in Athenian Democracy
● Zaharia: Divergent beliefs and political stakes around the ritual bronzes in Pre-imperial China
● Gouws: Beliefs and practices in ritual behaviour of the/Xampeoplein the Middle-Vaal region, South Africa
Room 1.3: The epidemic as a belief system: the cultural and political wars of the Covid-19 pandemic in historical perspective
● Terzioglu: Infodemics in Turkey: The Social Factors Shaping the Attitudes on Conspiracy Theories on the COVID-19
● Tepora: Society of Rumour: The Emotional Production of Knowledge in Second World War Finland with a Comparison to the Covid-19 Pandemic
● Radchenko: Sanitizing religion: belief discourse on anti-COVID-19 measures among Russian Orthodox Christians
Room 1.4: Beliefs on paper: Spreading knowledge with the press
● Huistra: Who invented the printing press? On the construction of historical facts in the nineteenth century
● Hakkarainen: Religion and moral training in early nineteenth-century children’s books: A brief look into the German cultural influences in imperial Russia
● Hara: East-West comparison of popular prints – Images d’Epinal in France and Ôtsu-e, Nishiki-e in Japan
Room 1.5: The negotiation of religious beliefs and identities in the ancient and late antique Mediterranean I
● Reese: “You have nothing understood at all”: Contesting the concept of god in the religious debate between pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity
● Pop: Is the universe spheric or rectangular? Cosmas Indicopleustes and his cosmographical interpretation
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 3
Room 1.1: The Nature of Belief: Environment and Religion in the Early Modern Republic of Venice
● Corso: The matter of religion: public debate on the divine presence in the sixteenth-century Republic
● Toffolon: Holy Spas. Ecology, Religion and Medicine in Early Modern Venice
● Zanon: Sainthood and Environment: Shaping Religious Beliefs around Nature
Room 1.2: The material and visual culture of faith: objects and images, their usages and power in Ancient time II
● Bottez and Constantin: A Medallion Issued by the Koinon Thrakon, Discovered in Istros
● Ţârlea and Iliescu: A Display of Faith: The sign of the cross in household contexts from Scythia Minor during the Late Roman period (4th – 6th centuries AD)
● Căpiță and Țârlea: In Things We Trust. Disbursements in favour of the sacred in Mycenaean Greece
Room 1.3: Narratives of illness: knowledge, politics, and beliefs
● Vesterberg: How an epidemic became a plague: Belief and unbelief in early 18th-century Sweden
● Karimäki: Who is responsible and what needs to change?–Politicians, knowledge and epidemics during the 20th and 21st centuries
● Tigani Sava: “Una illusione, una diceria, un intrigo… una cosa tutta politica”: beliefs, emotions, faith and the ‘myths of poisoning’ during the 1836-37 cholera epidemic of the Two Sicilies
● Wilson: Beliefs and experienced health and illness (Finland and Sweden ca 1750-1850)
Room 1.4: Communicating reality: How media shaped knowledge and beliefs I
● Hylkema: Illusion, Belief and Disbelief in the Reception of George Psalmanazar’s Imposture
● Pérez Sancho: Ignorance, omissions and resistance. Information, Governmentality and the management of uncertainty in Hispanic Monarchy at the end of the Ancién Régime
● Annanurova: In between of illusion and reality of knowledge: Belief and stereoscopic photographs at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries
Room 1.5: The negotiation of religious beliefs and identities in the ancient and late antique Mediterranean II
● Jacobson: “Ancient temples collapsed”: Plague as Impetus for the Christianization of Urban Space in Late Antique Rome and its Representation in Later Media
● Bozia: “Who, unless foolish, would believe that these are gods and not merely statues?”: State of spiritual (dis)belief in the Roman Empire
● Lițu: Religious belief and unbelief in Herodotus’ Histories
16:15–18:15 Parallel sessions 4
Room 1.1: Believing in the Celts?
● Robitaillié: Reviving Irish Myths in James Stephens’s Irish Fairy Tales (1920)
● Cacheux: Rewriting Celtic History: the example of Stephen Lawhead
● Moigne: Don’t judge a book by its cover, but a druid by his dress
● Armao: Should we believe in “Celtic Music”?
Room 1.2: The visual and material culture of beliefs in pre-modern times
● Hella: Manuscripts of Ferrara–Florence (1438–39): Objects of Knowledge and Belief
● Drăgan: Reasoning or Faith? Thomas Aquinas and Averroes – Traditions of Medieval Disputationes and Triumphs in Art
● Prelipceanu: Eastern Christian Religious Visual Culture under Habsburg Monarchy
Room 1.3: Emotions and faith
● Felicio: Emotional judgement and public decisions: Seneca’s stoic point of view
● Brewer: Unbelief, Repression, and Emotions in Medieval Europe: Three Case Studies
● Lahtinen: Experiences of the Darkness by the Light of the Beliefs
● Avsenik-Nabergoj: Emotions, the senses and faith in Slovenian folk prayers about the passion of Jesus
Room 1.4: Communicating reality: How media shaped knowledge and beliefs II
● Marinello: It’s funny because it’s (more) real: “fake news” as comedy news on television
● Liu and Zeng: Songs into the Mind: Populism, Civil Society, and the Fans Culture of Teresa Teng between the Taiwan Strait
● Aali: Believing in Science in Finland
● Katona: Misconceptions in the historical knowledge in Hungary. Why they became popular in the 21th century?
Room 1.5: The constraints of a violent life: experiences, beliefs and religion
● Morosini: Heretic condottieri, blasphemer soldiers: Italian Renaissance military beliefs and the case of Sigismondo Malatesta
● Fodor: “Thou shalt not kill”: Romanian Soldiers and the Confrontation of their Religious Beliefs with the Reality of the Great War
● Liliequist: The Swedish Menocchio: Lived experience and religious belief across time and culture (download the handout here)
● Weber (Dana): Between Belief and Fiction: German Conceptions of Blood Brotherhood
THURSDAY 4 AUGUST 2022
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 5
Room 1.1: Women Philosophers between Doubt and Belief: Tullia d’Aragona, Margaret Cavendish and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht
● Vernqvist: “I want you to bow to experience”: Philosphical Doubt and the Importance of Experience and Free Will in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo della infinità di amore
● Rosengren: The Constant Play of Opinions. Margaret Cavendish on Scientific Belief and Unbelief
● Amundsen Bergström: Cure This Doubting Soul. Philosophical Doubt and Religious Belief in Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht’s
Room 1.2: Stereotypes and representations
● Malmstedt: Shapeshifting and premodern perceptions of reality. Testimonies from a 17th century witch trial
● Iannuzzi: ”Addictedness to pretended witchcraft”: Indigenous knowledge, European travellers and the future as an epistemological arena in eighteenth-century North America
● Gusarova: This is not what she really looks like: disbelieving the images of women
● Moretti: A story of sorcery and maleficia: the perpetuation of witchcraft myths as a self-defence strategy in 18th-century Italy
Room 1.3: Self-consciousness, faith and (self-) writing: an individual in manuscript tradition of Middle Ages and Modern period
● Soshnikova: Women and Faith in the late 15th–early 16th Centuries in the French Manuscript and Printed Book
● Perämäki: Belief and unbelief in times of crisis: faith in the wartime diaries of young Jewish women
● Shchukina: Beliefs of the Russian North in the collective written tradition of the middle of the XVIII –XX centuries
Room 1.4: The invention of tradition: the role of beliefs in constructing heritage
● Schwenke: The preservation of the Greater Princess Vlei Conservation Area: the role of myth in forging collective memory and identity in Cape Town, South Africa
● Van Vollenhoven: The contested history of the capital city of South Africa: historical knowledge, belief and myth creation
● Pascar: Reinterpretations of religious images in Romanian contemporary art. Faith, meanings and taboos
Room 1.5: The long durée of supernatural narratives and practices
● Ohrvik: Layers of magical beliefs: A case of evil eye in a Norwegian police report from the 1950’ties
● Mihuț: The memory of the ancestors beyond the necropolis space. A case study from contemporary Romania
● Gicu: Storytelling culture: popular belief systems in a mountain region in Romania at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 6
Room 1.1: Religion, women and their representation
● Kuha: Faith in the everyday lives of Lutheran clergymen’s wives in late 17th-century Finland
● Ahonen: Gendered cultures of belief: Christina Rosenvinge’s Eve, Lot’s wife, Siren, and Echo
● Hägglund: Adopted nuns and the community of benefactors at the Birgittine monastery Nådendal
Room 1.2: Contemporary discussion on religion
● Trapletti: “My religion deserves respect as well as yours”: to claim the prerogatives as a religion to challenge the public relevance of religions
● Biano: Materializing the ‘Return of Religion’ in 1990s’ narratives and cultures of Un/ Belief
● Cash: Belief and Unbelief in the Postsocialist Revivals of Christian Orthodoxy: Sketching the Outlines of Religious and Political Conservatism in Local Contexts
Room 1.3: Collective Experiences Turning into Collective Belief. Socialist Generationsin Finnish Society from 1918 until 1970s
● Kaarninen: The memories and experiences on the Civil War through Children’s eyes
● Aatsinki: Childhood as an ideological environment in politicians’ memoirs
● Lalu: “We are all children of the soldiers” –the 1970s youth communism as intergenerational memory of 1918 in Finland
Room 1.4: Beliefs in the natural world and in non-human agency
● Strachan: Striking at the Heart of the Matter: Lightning and Belief in Ancient Rome
● Conti: Molding and Contesting Religious Beliefs in Late Antique Rome
● Ebert: Barking at the Moon and other Erroneous Behaviour – Concurrent Modes of ‘Explaining’ the Natural and Social World during the Carolingian Age (ca. 750–950 CE)
● Terzea-Ofrim and Ofrim: Beliefs in the Magic-Healing Role of Thunderstones in the Romanian Popular Culture
Room 1.5: The power of narrative: building and questioning myths in ancient times
● Petorella: In the Workshop of a Debunker: Rhetorical Techniques in Palaephatus’ Περὶἀπίστων
● Sulimani: Incorporating Mythography in Universal History: Believing in Myths or Suspending Disbelief?
● Fischer: The Political Influence of Pseudepigraphic Oracle Texts in Antiquity
● Bay: ‘From Faith to Faith’: Reading Fides between Classicism & Christianization in Late Antique Historiography
FRIDAY 5 AUGUST 2022
9:00–10:45 Parallel sessions 7
Room 1.1: In the public eye: belief and reputation as a matter of public discussion
● Ribuoli: Italiae fidem imploraret (Pis. 80.1-2) Who believed in Cicero, Roman historians or his contemporaries? Or rather, why belief and unbelief make more history
● Jones: Trust and Mistrust in Athenian Public Administration during the Classical Period
● Furlan: Ἀρρήτων ἀρρητότερα:unveiling the mysteries in Late Antiquity
Room 1.2: Objects of faith: relics and amulets from the early modern age to the contemporary world
● Räsänen: Relics and lived religion
● Gabriel: Faith and Belief in Times of Epidemics: The Veneration of the Virgin Mary and Saint Pascal Baylón in the Viceroyalty of New Spain
● Seregina: “Foolish” or “wonderful” relics: the mid-16thcentury English travelers in Catholic Europe
Room 1.3: Literary narratives of faith and truth
● Weber (Christian): Goethe as Cultural Historian: Transformations of Faith in Faust
● Staab: Dissolution of Truth. A Cultural History of Cognition of Truth in 18th Century Theatre Theory
● Attri: Construction of Reality and Belief in Literary Spaces: Retellings of Mythical Narratives
Room 1.4: Narratives of Unbelief as Resistance to Doubt in a Transhistorical Perspective
● Pinel Martínez: The Other Way Around: Skeptic Doubt as Way to Avoid Atheism in Classical Athens
● Bermejo-Rubio: Disturbing Skepticism versus Damage Control Functions and Meaning of the “Doubting Thomas” in the Fourth Gospel
● Alba López: Exegetical Approaches to the Doubting Thomas Pericope in Patristic Literature: Hilary of Poitiers’ exegesis of John 20 : 24-29 in the light of previous tradition
11:00–12:45 Parallel sessions 8
Room 1.1: Theory and methodology of cultural history
● Kokko and Harjula: Analysis of shared experiences in the social world: A new approach to cultural history
● Hoegaerts: Embodied Utterances, Historical Sounds: Including the Human Voice in Cultural History
● Kaartinen and Välimäki: Challenging Nonhuman Agency in Cultural History
Room 1.2: Words and the power of beliefs
● Immonen: Belief or Politics? A Case-Study of the Great Western Schism (1378-1417)
● Pobežin: Post-truth or pre-truth? Myth and History: a Very Long Engagement
● Geybullayeval: Some lexical history or The Infinity of Lists: Halo, Fatma, Odinas a radical transcendence sample in existential semiotics
Room 1.3: Building identities with beliefs
● Saarelainen: Cultural nationalism as systematic belief: Early Finnish romantics and transnational construction of modern Finnish culture
● Griffin: Neoliberalislam: Multiculturalism and Muslims in New Labour’s Britain (1997-2007)
● Burkett: Faith, belief and practice on British university campuses, c.1960
● Repo: Rustic, gluttonous and excessive. Visualizing beliefs about lower class food culture in 16thcentury Italian genre paintings
