A state-of-the-art study of popular movements and religiosity in Late Antiquity China (1st–2nd cent. CE), focused on issues of theology, practice, sources and terminology, and including a critical assessment of received scholarship.

Review of MAKING TRANSCENDENTS: ASCETICS AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Pp. xviii + 300.

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

Religions are widely accessible in the digital community and Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism Online engages with some of the internet’s representations of Hinduism, with a focus primarily on political and politico-nationalist representations. Juli L. Gittinger focuses on three organizations throughout the book: Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), R…[Read more]

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary…[Read more]

This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

A text on feminist 1970s avant-garde performance for the camera (Hannah Wilke, Birgit Jürgenssen, Ana Mendieta, Eleanor Antin) and the implications of the “wall” (lense) for the relationship between work and audience, as well as a text on VALIE EXPORT’s Touch Cinema (1968).

Der Artikel behandelt das Dissertationsprojekt des Autors, welches die archäologischen Besiedlungsaktivitäten in einem genau definierten Untersuchungsgebiet im nördlichen (heute niederösterreichischen) Hinterland der ehemaligen römischen Provinz Noricum behandelt.

This is a chronological comparative study of five visual artefacts spanning about a millennium in Chinese history and retrieved from various sources included in the mid-fifteenth century collection called in English the Taoist Canon. All five specimens are basically titled “Taiping fu” 太平符 in Chinese, literally “Great Peace Symbol”. By briefly in…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]

“Buddho-Taoism” is a neologism that appeared in Western academic discourse during the late nineteen-forties, was put to various uses without being consensually defined, enjoyed a brief vogue around the turn of the twenty-first century, and began to fall from grace in recent years. This neologism implicitly created new epistemic repertoires der…[Read more]

A syllabus for an undergraduate course, taught in English, on the visual culture (primarily film, photography, and aesthetic theory) of the Weimar Republic. The course is housed in German Studies and crosslisted with Art History, Cinema, and other departments.

Overview of the modern myth of a prehistoric great mother goddess

A brief examination of the modern mythology around the faience votive figures from the “Temple Repositories” at Knossos in Crete that were discovered and heavily restored by Arthur Evans and his team at Knossos in the early 20th century

This paper shows how city councils in Swiss Cantons and southern Germany coped with the upcoming Reformation by organizing public disputations in order to decide which faith the community should choose.

The altar screen mosaic icons were ordered and installed on a new reconstructed altar screen in the Žiča Monastery in 1993. The sketches made by a painter, Mladen Srbinović were approved by a committee consisting of eminent experts. Furthermore , The Serbian Patriarch Paul gave his blessing to the icons. However, soon after they were put up, th…[Read more]