The course will explore and analyze the historical and contemporary criticisms of sacrifice across various religious and cultural contexts. It will focus on the persistence, opposition, and reinterpretation of sacrifice practices from antiquity to the present day.

During the course, experts from different disciplines, including Indology, Classics, Archaeology, History of Religions, Anthropology, and Sociology, will lead discussions on key themes:

• The concept of sacrifice as a “survival” in academic and non-academic discourses.
• Theological critiques of sacrifice, such as the juxtaposition of Christ's sacrifice versus animal sacrifice.
• Secular critiques centered on violence, bloodshed, and meat consumption.
• The notions of impurity and taboo in sacrifice, as well as its “spiritualization” through non-bloody offerings.
• The role of sacrifice in spiritual practices like healing, divination, and exorcism.
• Strategies to preserve animal sacrifice through reinterpretation or resemantization.
• Secular critiques focusing on vegetarianism, health, and animal rights.
• The contestation of sacrifice in political narratives and legal frameworks, including European regulations on animal protection during killing.
• Archaeological approach to sacrifice based on osteological remains

This interdisciplinary course will be tailored for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in fields such as history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. The course will feature a mix of virtual and physical teaching, facilitated by faculty from participating universities and external specialists. Topics will range from Armenian rituals to the politics of ritual vegetarianism in ancient Greece, India, and modern South Asia, the contested practices of Christian and Muslim sacrifices in the Balkans, and ritual innovations in Candomblé’s perspectives on animals.

The physical mobility section of the BIP will take place between 2-6 June 2026, in Bucharest, Romania. The program of the on-site component is structured as follows:

Day 1

Morning

• First meeting of the entire student cohort with teachers and student assistants (students from the University of Bucharest involved in the BIP for administrative purposes).
• Lecture presentation: The Textual Memory of Construction Sacrificial Practices: A Case Study on the Argeș Monastery
• Objective: To present how the theme of construction sacrifice is reshaped through its circulation in the form of an oral tradition.

Afternoon

• Preparatory workshop: How to conduct ethnographic research.
• Introduction to ethnographic methods: interview, conversation, and observation.
• Purpose: To familiarize students with the basic methods used to study the memory of cultural practices, preparing them for their visit to the Curtea de Argeș Monastic Complex.
• Stakeholder involvement: The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.

Day 2 – Day Trip to Curtea de Argeș

• Visit to the church site to explore how the memory of sacrifice is preserved through texts and its contemporary echoes among pilgrims, visitors, guides, and clerical staff.
• This visit will give students the opportunity to conduct real-life ethnographic research.
• Objective: To study cultures of sacrifice using ethnographic methods.

Day 3

Morning

• Keynote lecture by Alexandra Litu (Faculty of History):
• The Archaeological and Epigraphic Record of Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Greek World
• Objective: To present research on sacrificial cultures studied through archaeological methods, focusing particularly on the former Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast.
• This lecture will provide the context for the next two workshops, which focus on archaeological findings from Romanian sites.

Afternoon

• Workshop at the Institute of Archaeology
• Objective: To analyze archaeological remains discovered in Romania and housed at the Institute, while presenting the methods used by archaeologists to establish connections between these remains and sacrificial practices.

Day 4

Morning

• Workshop at the Institute of Anthropology
• Objective: To analyze osteoarchaeological remains and demonstrate how physical anthropologists assess evidence of sacrificial practices using human and animal bones.

Afternoon

• Collaborative preparation of student presentations:
  - Students will be divided into smaller groups. The most senior student, or the one who has shown the best performance so far, will act as an informal team leader.
  - In parallel, students will curate visual materials gathered during workshops and fieldwork. They will select those with the greatest potential to become viral on social media.
  - Selected visuals will be uploaded to a dedicated social media account created to share updates about the BIP activities and students’ research findings.

Day 5

• Final student presentations
  - Students will present their work.
  - 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 course will run online between 8 February -  29 May 2026. 

• The virtual component will consist of a series of introductory lesson of cultures of sacrifice and will last 08.02.-29.05.2026.
• The sessions will take place on Fridays, at 4 p.m. CET (5 p.m. Bucharest time). The concrete dates will be announced at a later stage.

1. Introduction (Adrian Stoicescu, Marianna Ferrara, Pierluigi Lanfranchi)
2. Sacrifice and Politics (Pierluigi Lanfranchi)
3. Sacrifice and the Body (Adrian Stoicescu, Alexandra Litu)
4. Sacrifice and Violence (Nadia Cattoni and Philippe Bornet)
5. Sacrifice and Law (Francesca Scrofani)
6. Sacrifice and Food (Marianna Ferrara)
7. Conclusions and discussion