Cfp: *ARYS XVIII 2020 – Rituals and habitus in the ancient world*

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Ritualization is the most prominent form of religious action in
Mediterranean antiquity and beyond. In order to communicate with the divine
(and thus constituting its reality and shape) certain gestures, sequences
of actions and words are differentiated from ordinary, pragmatic action,
ritualised and even ‘sacralised’ – by individuals as well as smaller or
larger groups. Such patterns of action are repeated or taken as a blueprint
for modification and innovation. They are the field for the establishment
or questioning of religious authority, they are the means to temporarily or
permanently mark out spaces as special. They sacralise not only spaces, but
also times and natural or artificial material things, animals and people –
and are drawing on such sacralized elements to ascertain the actions’ own
status and to elaborate on them.
Research on ancient rituals has taken many different directions. They have
been seen as continuation of prehuman patterns of action or inventions of
cunning religious specialists. Fruitful analyses have inquired about the
‘meaning’ of such rituals as described and ascribed by different groups of
participants or individual observers. Others have stressed the aesthetics
and patterns and the non-verbal logic of such actions. They have been seen
as the dramatization of traditional narratives or prescribed norms, shared
values and conceptions of time of place. Plausibly, they could be analysed
as incorporating and affirming social hierarchies or as the results of
individual framing of situations.

This *issue of Arys (n° 18, 2020)* will follow a very different path,
combining questions of individual performance and cultural pattern, social
and material constellations. Taking the instigation of recent theorising on
ancient religion as ‘lived religion’ (J. Rüpke *et al.*) on the one hand
and sociological ‘resonance theory’ (H. Rosa) on the other as points of
departure, the volume will ask how certain rituals contribute to the
formation of specific relationships of their actors to their material or
social environment and to their own self or the wider horizons of the world
in its entirety, whether in the form of divine symbols, a spatial world
(like ‘nature&rsquo or a temporal one (‘history)’. What are the mechanisms of
the development, ‘teaching’ or habitualising specific relationships to
one’s Self, to other people, to the material world or encompassing concepts
like the divine or nature? How do the different elements of rituals –
repetition and individual performance, models and preferences expressed,
the reproduction of daily habits or extraordinary ways of acting – work
together in such processes? What is the role of rituals in shaping the
disposition of those involved, regardless in whatever role they are
involved – as specialist, performer, participant or ‘mere’ observer?

*Contributions are invited from all relevant disciplines, Ancient History,
Classical Philology, Archaeology and History of Religion* for instance.
They should engage with a specific type of ritual action, literary views of
such ritualised action or material and architectural arrangements in
certain cultural contexts or epochs throughout the ancient Mediterranean
world. Engaging with the central research question of the volume they need
to reflect their methodological approach and the possibilities and
limitations of generalisation of their findings.

Interested authors are invited to contact a member of the editorial team
and to *submit a final draft of an abstract until January 31st, 2019*. The
article, ranging *between 6,000 and 10,000 words (including bibliography)*
must be submitted by *December 31st, 2019*. The process of peer review and
revisions, if necessary, will take the first half of 2020, allowing for a
publication of the volume by the end of 2020.

With best wishes, the *editorial team*:

Elisabeth Begemann (elisabeth.begemann@uni-erfurt.de)
Katharina Rieger (anna.rieger@uni-graz.at)
Jörg Rüpke (joerg.ruepke@uni-erfurt.de)
Wolfgang Spickermann (wolfgang.spickermann@uni-graz.at)
Katharina Waldner (katharina.waldner@uni-erfurt.de)