Conference "Glorious Cities: The Presence of Jerusalem in the Urban European Space"

Deadline: April 30th-May 3rd

We are pleased to invite you to the international conference "Glorious Cities: The Presence of Jerusalem in the Urban European Space", to be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
This conference aims to examine the presence of Jerusalem in European cities and map the borders of this phenomenon in European culture. The presence of Jerusalem abroad manifests itself through building, organization of space, strategic placement of monuments and objects, procession, pilgrimage, and cult. We seek to stress the social factors and the specific interests that dictated the use and manipulation of Jerusalem in European cities at certain moments of their history, as well as the conditions under which identifications with Jerusalem, once established, persisted and evolved. Presentations will focus on case studies and analyze both, the motivations – social, political, religious - and the consequences of the adoption of Jerusalem in the respective urban centers. The conference will include a range of topics comprising monumental genres (architecture, three-dimensional sculpture, installation) as well as objects and topics that served as tools of transmission and transposition, such as relics and reliquaries, liturgy and Andacht, prayer and music. The conference will strive to generate a discourse on possible parallels with the physical presence of Jerusalem in Jewish and Islamic communities. We strive to turn this conference into an important starting point to theorising cities as Jerusalem, and stress the human elements, the historical, social and political conditions alongside the architectural ones. In order to reach these goals, a group of distinguished scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel who have engaged on various aspects of the topic in their previous research, have expressed willingness to enter new territory.

Organizers: Bianca Kuehnel, Neta Bodner, Hila Manor

Full Program: http://ias.huji.ac.il/gloriouscities?_ga=2.66146414.1157481954.1523795793-408755594.1500644580