CROSSCULTURE Religious Studies Sommer Schule 2026
Summer School 03.08.2026 – 07.08.2026
Photo: O.Rötting
Summer School 03.08.2026 – 07.08.2026
The Body in Religion
Embodiment, Practice, and Identity
at the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg
Join us in Salzburg to think with, through, and about the body—where theory meets practice and global perspectives come alive. Discover how bodies shape and are shaped by religious life at “The Body in Religion: Embodiment, Practice, and Identity,” a global summer school bringing together students and scholars from Nairobi, Haifa, Salzburg, Seoul (Dongguk), Yogyakarta (UGM), Varanasi (BHU), and Bologna. Hosted in Salzburg—in cooperation with the Salzburger Hochschulwochen—this immersive program explores the body as a site of devotion, discipline, power, memory, and belonging across diverse traditions and cultural contexts. Through interdisciplinary seminars, hands-on workshops, and dialog with international faculty, participants will examine how embodied practices—from ritual gestures and ascetic techniques to dress, dance, and healing—shape religious identities and public life. Engage with case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, and beyond, and sharpen your methodological toolkit in anthropology, theology, history, and performance studies.
Program
Monday 03.08.2026
9:00 Arrival
10:30 Registration, Introduction
11:00 Lecture 1: “The Body: A religious Hope, Promise or Illusion?” (Martin Rötting, University of Salzburg/Austria) & Response 1:NN
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Lecture 2: „Body as Flesh, Body as Wisdom: The Many Bodies of the Buddha (Wamae W. Muriuki Nairobi / Kenia) & Response 2: Soonil Hwang / Korea
15:30 Group Work (MR) Religion & Biography
19:30 Student Party
Tuesday 04.08.2026
09:00 Lecture 3: „Persistent Bodies: The Syncretic Corpse and Ritual Endurance in Maragoli Funerary Practice.“ (Prof. Dr. Edith Kayeli Chamwama, Univ. of Nairobi / Kenia &) Response 3NN
10:30 Lecture 4: „Bodies and Sites as cultural Power for Buddhism in modern Indonesia“ (Dr. Yulianti, CRCS UGM / Indonesia) & Response 4:NN
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Hochschulwochen HS 101: Lecture 5: „Embodying Confucianism moralty for social Harmony“ (Evi Sutrision, CRCS UGM / Indonesia): Response 5: Emma Abate / Italy
15:30 Lecture 6: „Body and Buddhism“ (Soonil Hwang, Dongugk University / Korea) Response 6: Martin Rötting/ Austria
19:30 Concert
Wednesday 05.08.2026
9:00 Student papers I
10:30 Student papers II
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Cultural Outing: „Bodies in Baroque“
18:00 Faculty Meeting
19:30 Award Ceremony (in German) or free evening
Thursday 06.08.2026
9:00 Lecture 7: „The Body of God in Jewish Tradition“ (Yossi Chajes Univ. of Haifa / Israel) & Response 7:
10:30 Lecture 8: „The Body Shop: From Golem to Homunculus (An Archaeolgy of Anthropoiesis in Jewish and Christian Cultures)“ (Emma Abate, Univ. of Bologna / Italy)
11:00 Response 8: Yossi Chajes / Israel
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Workshop Body, Feeling, Dance and Religion
15:30 17:00 Ulrich-Winkler Award
19:30 Reception at the Bischofsresidenz
Friday 07.08.2026
9:00 Lecture 9: ” Dr. Baleshwar Yadav Benares Hindu Universtiy / India
10:30 Reflection, Response, Closure & Farwell
More information about the lectures:
Papers
The Body: A religious Hope, Promise or Illusion? (Assoz. Prof. Dr. Martin Rötting)
The body is used in religion to foster spiritual process but also to warn about impermanence.
For many forms of spirituality and religion, the body is a subject of debate, a tool, a source of hope, but also a danger. The worship of the body and hostility towards it are integral parts of religious rituals and spiritual practices. Overcoming the body and its ‘passions’ is just as much a part of religious hopes as the possibility of achieving the goal of spiritual paths through practices that engage the body (such as breathing techniques). This lecture seeks to trace these wide-ranging and diverse approaches to the body in religion and to situate bodily practices and perspectives between hope, promise and illusion.
Body as Flesh, Body as Wisdom: The Many Bodies of the Buddha (Prof. Dr. Wamae W. Muriuki)
After the Buddha’s death, the growing Buddhist community faced a conundrum: how to understand his life and teachings in light of the relationship between ignorance and wisdom. How did he, with all the limitations of a human being, come to discover wisdom from within the depths of ignorance?
Drawing from the Samyutta Nikaya, in which the Buddha is recorded as saying to the Venerable Vakkali; „One who sees the Dhamma sees me; one who sees me sees the Dhamma. For in seeing the Dhamma, Vakkali, one sees me; and in seeing me, one sees the Dhamma“ (22.87), Buddhists, particularly in the Mahayana tradition creatively elaborate that we must see the Buddha (and other advanced Buddhist practitioners, like bodhisattvas) as having 3 „bodies:“ a body of flesh and blood, a body of glorious reward, and a body as dharma.
This presentation will trace how this threefold schema helped Buddhists resolve many tricky philosophical questions related to not just the relationship between wisdom and ignorance, but time and space, eternity and ordinary time, and transcendence and immanence.
The Body as Obstacle and Instrument to Liberation in Early Indian Buddhism (Dr. D.Phil Soonil Hwang)
Early Buddhist soteriology presents a complex relationship with the body, simultaneously identifying it as the primary locus of suffering (dukkha) and the essential foundation for liberation. Texts within the Pali Canon consistently portray the body as impermanent, subject to decay, and a source of attachment, fueling the cycle of rebirth. This perspective informed early ascetic practices, initially embraced as a means to subdue desire, but ultimately rejected by the Buddha as unproductive and even detrimental. However, the body was not simply to be negated. Ethical discipline (sila), a cornerstone of the Eightfold Path, fundamentally relies on bodily conduct, establishing a framework for skillful action. Crucially, meditative practices, particularly those emphasizing mindfulness(satipatthana), directly engage with bodily sensations as objects of observation. This mindful awareness, rather than suppression, allows practitioners to dismantle habitual patterns of craving and aversion. This tension – the body as both obstacle and instrument – is central to early Buddhist thought. Liberation is not achieved through annihilation of the body, but through a transformative understanding of its nature, utilizing it as a vehicle for cultivating wisdom and ultimately transcending suffering. The body, therefore, remains integral to the path, even as the goal is its ultimate dissolution into nibbana.
The Body of God in Jewish Tradition (Prof. Dr. J.H. Yossi Chajes)
From the anthropomorphic deity of the Hebrew Bible to the luminous cosmic figure of Adam Kadmon, the question of whether — and in what sense — God possesses a body has animated Jewish religious thought across three millennia. This lecture traces a continuous yet contested tradition. It begins with the frank corporealism of biblical narrative and prophecy, where God appears in humanoid form, and argues that classical rabbinic literature, far from suppressing this inheritance, preserved and extended it — a tendency that found its most intense expression in the throne and chariot traditions of late antique Jewish mysticism and in the staggering divine measurements of Shiur Qomah. The lecture then examines the decisive rupture of the high medieval period, when Maimonides enshrined divine incorporeality as a binding dogmatic principle — and the immediate resistance this provoked, most memorably in the dissenting gloss of Abraham ben David of Posquières, the great twelfth-century Provençal rabbinic authority. The second half turns to classical Kabbalah, which navigated this tension with characteristic ingenuity: formally committed to the incorporeality of Ein Sof (No-End, the apophatic Hebrew term for the Divine), yet preserving — indeed, systematizing — the divine body as the structural form of the sefirotic tree. This dynamic culminates in the Lurianic figure of Adam Kadmon, the primordial divine anthropos whose limbs and orifices become the generative architecture of creation. Throughout, the lecture draws on the visual evidence of kabbalistic ilanot to show how this theology was not merely speculated but diagrammed, mapped, and embodied on the page.
The Body Shop: From Golem to Homunculus (An Archaeology of Anthropopoiesis in Jewish and Christian Cultures) (Prof. Emma Abate)
My lecture explores the cultural and religious imaginaire surrounding the artificial production of human bodies and life in Jewish and Christian traditions through a comparative analysis of two emblematic figures: the golem and the homunculus. Initially embedded in ritual practices of anthropopoiesis and later elaborated in legendary and literary traditions, both function as anthropological and epistemic devices through which different conceptions of corporeality, embodiment and human agency are articulated. Emerging from religious practices concerned with the fabrication and animation of the human body, these figures offer privileged perspectives on the relationship between matter, life and the human condition.Adopting an archaeological perspective, the paper traces their migration from religious contexts into artistic and literary poiesis. Rooted respectively in Jewish mystical traditions and Christian-alchemical speculation, the golem and the homunculus inhabit a liminal space between divine power and human artifice, where the body becomes a site of experimentation and symbolic negotiation. Their enduring presence across texts, images and performances reveals a persistent fascination with the possibility of imitating God by producing life through symbolic, magical, or technical means.The paper examines how these figures have mediated broader reflections on corporeality, creativity, and the limits of human intervention in the divine order. From kabbalistic legends and alchemical treatises to modern reinterpretations – from Frankenstein to 2001: A Space Odyssey, to contemporary reflections on artificial intelligence – their transformations illuminate changing understandings of the body, agency and creation within increasingly secularized contexts, making anthropopoiesis a privileged site for observing the reconfiguration and existential tensions of religious meanings in Western culture.
The Empirical Grammar of Personal Hope. Case Studies in South Korea and Austria
There is passive and active hope. One aspect of hope also refers to a situation that is not in one’s own hands, a “paradise prepared for us”. Another aspect refers to a part that one must contribute to oneself. This also applies to concrete hopes, as in the case of climate change. We know that everyone has to participate, including us. But if only I participate, it is “irrelevant”. What is important here is the idea of critical mass, according to which a certain percentage (10%) of the population is enough to “get the ball rolling”. Prophetic figures of hope can be effective because the “critical mass” can be reached. Greta Tunberg and the Fridays for Future can be seen as an example. An important aspect for the motivating life force, according to the hypothesis of this paper, is the concrete utopia (Ernst Bloch), a possibility to help bring about this “critical mass” in order to make decisive visions of hope a reality. The paper investigates empirical shapes of hope in Austria and South Korea and asks questions of cultural sharpening of religious forms of hope.
Ven. Chongdok C.H. Park, Dongguk University, Korea
Young adult Buddhism in the 21st century Korea
The South Korean birth rate has dropped by over half since the 1990s and, if current trends continue, the nation’s population will begin contracting by 2035. Meanwhile, South Korean society has grown increasingly materialistic and secular. As of the nation’s 2015 census, only 15.5% of the country described themselves as Buddhist, compared with 22.8% a decade earlier, while 56% of all South Koreans and 65% of young adults claim no religious affiliation at all. Korean Buddhism is not alone in this crisis, however, as dropping birthrates and aging populations are adversely affecting the recruitment of Catholic clergy, not
only in Korea, but around the globe. The Jogye Order, the biggest Buddhist Order in Korea, is clearly struggling to remain relevant in contemporary Korean society, especially among the younger generations, and unless the Korean Jogye Buddhist Order reverses these trends, the order faces the real possibility of extinction.
Over the last three decades, the Korean Jogye Order’s postulant education system has made considerable progress in standardizing, centralizing, and modernizing Buddhist education for aspiring monastics. As celebrated by the order’s 2022 publication “The 30-year History of Buddhist Monastic Postulant Education”, the order’s program has successfully seen over 9800 ordained novices graduate since its launch in 1991. However, there is a broad consensus within Korea’s Buddhist community that the religion is in crisis and, within the order, in particular, that its future is in peril. Unless it is reversed, the trend portends the very real possibility of the order’s demise by the end of the 21st century, if not sooner. The order recently vowed to reverse the downward trend in monastic recruitment and raise the annual number of ordained novices to 150 by 2025 through a multifaceted plan involving greater youth outreach efforts, an increased social media presence, and online Buddhist educational materials, along with an expansion of the order’s international missionary efforts. Given that postulant recruitment is critical to the order’s survival, this lecture examines Young adult Buddhism in Korea and the Jogye Buddhist Order’s postulant education system in light of the current membership crisis.
Prof. Ananda Mishra, Prof. Grace Darling
Department of Philosophy & Religion, Banaras Hindu University, India.
Agency, Autonomy and Individual Responsibility in Theism with special reference to the Hindu Religious Text Śrimadbhagavadgītā.
The idea of God and the Free-will is logically incompatible according to Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) whereas Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) does not find them incompatible. God in Spinoza is impersonal though determinism is complete. This ‘divine determinism’ will be an ideal position for any theologist belonging to the theistic religions who believe in Personal God. And here lies the significance of the ancient religious text Śrimadbhagavadgītā (Gītā). Gītā presents a fully deterministic world-view where everything is controlled, regulated and pre-determined by the Omniscient, Omnipresent and all-good God. In this world which is completely determined and regulated by the Almighty God there is full autonomy of the self and total freedom of the agent according to Gītā. God here is personal and ‘divine determinism’ is also total. How autonomy and free agency is possible in a completely God-regulated world has been a perplexing problem for the world religions and their theologists. The resolution of this problem by Gītā is its unique gift to them. As Gītā addresses this issue in a philosophical and rational way the treatment of the problem and the solutions offered may be utilized by other world religions and their theologists.
Emma Abate
Jewish-Christian Syncretism in Magic and Art: Renaissance to Modernity
This lecture explores the dynamic interplay between Jewish and Christian traditions in magic and art from the Renaissance to modernity. During the Renaissance, the resurgence of esotericism, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah created fertile ground for syncretism, where Jewish mystical concepts were reinterpreted within Christian frameworks. Figures like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and Egidio da Viterbo absorbed Kabbalistic elements, blending them with Neoplatonism, Orphism and aspects of medieval spirituality like Gioacchino da Fiore and Ramon Lull, to construct new intellectual syntheses. Such exchanges raised critical questions about cultural and religious agencies, as well as tensions between appropriation and reverence. The lecture will examine pivotal individuals who navigated these overlapping spheres, including Christian Hebraists, messianic figures, kabbalists and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity). They exemplified personal autonomy while grappling with collective responsibility—balancing innovation with fidelity to tradition. Art also served as a medium for syncretic expression, where esoteric symbols, including the Hebrew alphabet, sefirotic diagrams, the Temple vessels, and Christian iconography, intertwined. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, and later William Blake embedded mystical and spiritual knowledge into visual culture, reflecting individual agency in exploring cross-religious themes. In the contemporary world, painters like Anselm Kiefer and Alberto Abate renovate this tradition, incorporating Kabbalistic and Christian motifs to examine the search for transcendence and interfaith spiritual synthesis. By tracing these developments, the lecture highlights how Jewish-Christian syncretism in magic and art allowed individuals to assert autonomy and creativity while engaging with the weight of religious responsibility. This investigation invites reflection on the complexities of interfaith exchange and the enduring role of individual agency in shaping the evolution of religious traditions.
Speakers:
Assoz. Prof. Dr. Martin Rötting
Leitung Religious Studies
Zentrumsleiter
Universitätsplatz 1, 5020 Salzburg
Tel.: +43 (0)662 / 8044 – 2629
Fax.: +43 (0)662 / 8044 – 742629
E-Mail:
1990-1994. Studies in Religious Education at Catholic University Eichstätt
1999-2001. Studies in ecumenism at Trinity College Dublin, MA of Ecumenic Studies
2002-2007. Doctorate (Dr. phil.) in Religious Studies at the Ludwig- Maximilians-University Munich
2013-2018. Habilitation in Religious Studies at the LMU Munich
2019- Professor of Religious Studies at the Univeristy of Salzburg
Dr. D.Phil Soonil Hwang
Associate Professor in the College of Buddhist Studies and also Dean of the College of Buddhism in Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. His main field of research is the doctrinal history of Early Buddhism and Buddhist culture in South and Southeast Asia. Courses: Early & sectarian Buddhism
1987-1993 Dept. of Indian Philosophy, Dongguk Univ. Seoul
1993 B.A. in Indian Philosophy1993-1995 Graduate School, Dept. of Indian Philosophy, Dongguk Univ. Seoul
1995 M.A. in Early Indian Buddhism
1996-2002 Dept. of Oriental Studies, Oxford University
2003 D.Phil. Oxford University
Ven. Chongdok C.H. Park
Prof. Dr. Ananda Mishra
Prof. Dr. Grace Darling
Prof. Dr. J.H. (Yossi) Chajes
Dr. Wamae Muriuki
Prof. Emma Abate
Prof. Dr. Edith Kayeli Chamwama
Dr. Yulianti
Dr. Samsul Maarif
Education:1995-1999. Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN/ The State Institute for Islamic Studies) Alauddin, Makassar, Indonesia. S1 in Islamic Theology and Philosophy.2001-2003. Gadjah Mada University Jogjakarta, Indonesia. M.A in Religious and Cross-cultural Studies.2004-2005. Florida International University, Miami, Florida. AS. MA in Religious Studies.2006-2012. Arizona State University, Temple, Arizona. AS. Ph.D. in Religious Studies.
Evi Lina Sutrisno
Evi Lina Sutrisno is both affiliated to Faculty of Social and Political Sciences adn Center for Cross-Religious and Cultural Studies at the University of Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her research interests are about Confucianism, Chinese-Indonesians, Identity Politics and Multiculturalism. She has done research on the history of Confucianism in Indonesia and the struggles of its believers to be acknowledged as a formal religion by the Indonesian government. Currently, she does regular updates on this topic by making several research on the Chinese-Indonesian struggles to promote multiculturalism through Chinese festivals, the split between Confucian believers and the tension within the Chinese community about the blurry boundaries between religion and traditions, which creates disputes whether Chinese iconic festivals, such as Chinese New Year, Cap Go Meh (the first lunar festival), King Hoo Ping (the ancestral spirit worship) are religious or traditional rituals.
Embodying Virtue: Body and Faith Expression in Confucian Values
Drawing on classical concepts such as li (ritual propriety) and xiao (filial piety), the class examines how Confucian values are inscribed onto the body through disciplined practices—gestures, postures, and ritual performances—that are expressed in rituals and everyday life. These embodied forms are not merely symbolic but function as technologies of self-cultivation, shaping moral subjectivity and social harmony. In Confucian values, body can be understood as a site where ethical norms, social hierarchies, and cosmological beliefs intersect.
The class will briefly discuss the historical dimension of the Confucian values about body in China. In the Indonesian history, these values, which had been embodied and practiced by many Chinese-Indonesians, were used by the Dutch colonizers to strengthen racial segregation politics. The class further situates these values within contemporary contexts, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which Confucian values endorsed Confucian believers to comply with the Indonesian government regulation to prevent the spreading of Covid-19 virus.
By engaging with embodiment theory and lived religion approaches, this study contributes to broader discussions on religion and the body by highlighting a non-Western framework in which faith is not primarily articulated through belief, but through cultivated bodily practice. It ultimately argues that Confucianism offers a compelling model of how moral and religious life is enacted, disciplined, and transmitted through the body.
Conditions for attending our Summer School:
For the SummerSchool attendants you need to register
- For Salzburg University Students: Course – Registration
- Summer School 2026 external Students: Registration
- Download Summer School Crossculture Program 2026
- for people under 30 REGISTER here: https://www.salzburger-hochschulwochen.at/2026/anmeldung-studierend. First registration of the SummerSchool will be served first | Comming soon!
Important notes:
- ROOM: If you have a private room in Salzburg and do not need to book a room, book the „Wochenkarte“ only.
- HELP & Information:
Direction to the University of Salzburg?
Arrival at Salzburg main station: Take trolleybus line 1 to the stop “Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz“. ⇒ On Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz turn northeast towards Universitätsplatz. ⇒ Turn right onto Universitätsplatz– the university is on the right hand side.
Arrival Salzburg Airport ⇒ Take trolleybus line 10 to the stop “Herbert von Karajan-Platz”. ⇒ On Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz turn northeast towards Universitätsplatz. ⇒Turn right onto Universitätsplatz – the university is on the right hand side.
Apply for a student paper:
All students are allowed to hand in papers. The papers have to focus on problems of crosscultural relations and give a concrete field example. This can include academical, methodical, hermeneutical, philosophical, theological, or other relevant perspectives. Please send an abstract with 150 words to Prof. Martin Rötting () till 15.07.2026.
Criteria to receive 3 ECTS:
In order to get 3 ECTS points you need to attend all lectures of the SummerSchool program, give a paper in the presentation slot and hand it in as an academic paper (10 pages, 12 New Times Roman, 1,5 space) to Prof. Martin Rötting ().
