The religious body: embodied rituals and transformative practices across cultures and history

"The Religious Body" BIP aims to explore the role of the body as a privileged locus of religious experience, a vehicle of meaning, and an instrument through which human communities construct, express, and transmit their relationships with extra-human or meta-human entities. 

Assuming that the body is a biological, symbolic, social, and cultural reality, the program analyzes how gestures, postures, bodily practices, and sensory perceptions acquire ritual significance in various religious traditions from antiquity to the contemporary era. This analysis is conducted from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

The course draws on anthropological studies of the body, performative theories of ritual, and the history of religions for its theoretical approach. From this perspective, the body is considered not only the "medium" through which a ritual is performed but also the space in which the ritual takes shape and acquires meaning.

Through a combination of lectures, case study analyses, seminar discussions, and visits to places of worship, students will reflect on how bodily rituals contribute to constructing individual and collective identities and defining boundaries between the "sacred" and the "profane," as well as mediating between human and meta-human dimensions.

1. The role of the body in religious phenomena;
2. The symbolic value of movement;
3. The gestural language of prayer;
4. The ritualization of pain and suffering;
5. Ascetic and purificatory practices;
6. The relationship between the body, gender, and power within religious institutions;

1. The sensory dimension of liturgy.

During the course, students will:

• acquire theoretical knowledge of the primary interpretations of the body and ritual throughout the history of religions.
• gain a comparative understanding of the diversity of bodily practices across religious and cultural traditions;
• develop analytical skills to interpret textual, iconographic, and performative sources related to rituals;
• develop a critical awareness of the symbolic, social, and political meanings of bodily practices;
• foster an experiential and reflective approach that recognizes the body's value as a tool for acquiring knowledge and building relationships.

By the end of the course, students will be able to interpret rituals as complex phenomena of symbolic communication, identity construction, and cultural negotiation, not only as religious acts. Students will understand that the body is a "living text" in which beliefs, norms, emotions, and worldviews are inscribed, rather than a mere vehicle for spirituality.

The physical mobility section of the BIP will take place between 24-28 May 2027, in Aix en Provence, France. The program of the on-site component is structured as follows:

Day 1

• first meeting of the entire student cohort with teachers and student assistants
• visit to the religious collections at the MUCEM in Marseille
• preparatory workshop with the museum’s curators on the Feast of Saint Sara in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

Day 2 – Day trip to Les Saintes Maries de la Mer

• visit and observation of the pilgrimage during the Feast of Saint Sara, one of the most important religious festivals for the gypsy community in Europe. It will be an opportunity for the students to conduct real-life ethnographic research. They will also create videos of the festival with their phones

Day 3

• workshop on Ethnographic Documentaries
• hands-on workshop on film editing

Day 4

• visit to the Archaeological Museum of Arles and lecture on the role of the body in Roman religion​
• students work independently to prepare the final panel featuring their videos
  

Day 5 - Final student presentations

• In addition to traditional teacher assessments, students will provide peer feedback on two levels:
  a) the content of the presentations
  b) the presentation strategies used

The virtual component will take place between 8 February - 29 May and will consist of a series of introductory lesson on the role of the body in religious rituals. The sessions will take place on Mondays, at 04:00 PM CET. The exact dates of the meetings will be announced later on. 

Courses:

• Nadia Cattoni (University of Lausanne): Devotional Bodies: Devotees and Krishna Bhakti
• Maheshwari Sharvi (Oxford Center for Hindu Studies): The Ritual Performance of Navadurga
• Marianna Ferrara (University La Sapienza, Rome): Religious Bodies and Gender: methodological approaches
• Mara Matta (University La Sapienza, Rome): Postcolonial bodies and religion in South Asia
• Pierluigi Lanfranchi (Aix-Marseille University): The Feast of the Convito in Roccavaldina (Sicily): the invention of a new ritual
• Adrian Stoicescu: to be announced 
• Philippe Bornet: to be announced 
• Hayat Zirari (University Hassan II, Casablanca): to be announced
• Francesca Scrofani (Aix-Marseille University): to be announced

We propose a three-step approach to the assessment of students’ performance during the project:

a) Written deliverables – a 1000-word paper on the collaborative learning physical mobility activity to detail the hands-on case study in which the competences gained should be reflected in small research projects conducted on site.

b) Oral deliverables – final group presentations stemming from the collaborative research experience.

c) Visual deliverables – videos to function as alternative ways to present the research findings, also from the perspective of popularisation of science.

Motivation Letter

Level of english (According to CEFR)

CV

The applications will be evaluated based on:

1. knowledge acquisition in terms of theories and methods;
2. the capacity to build a case study from the onsite research;
3. dissemination capacity, including the transversal skills.

• Pierluigi Lanfranchi, Associate Professor, Aix-Marseille Universite
  
• Francesca Scrofani, Aix-Marseille Universite
• Marianna Ferrara, Associate Professor in History of Religions, Sapienza Università di Roma.
• Philippe Bornet, Associate Professor University of Lausanne.
• Nadia Cattoni, Assistant Professor University of Lausanne.
• Adrian Stoicescu, Associate Professor, University of Bucharest
• Hayat Zirari, University of Hassan II, Casablanca