Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life
June 23-July 6, 2020
For much of their histories, the countries that today make up the Balkan Peninsula have shared a past; certainly of religion (or rather religions), usually of empire, often of conflict, always of migration, and just as constantly of trade, tastes in food (and drink), as well as of folk practices. Different ancestors—Thracians, Scythians, Romans, Greeks, Illyrians, proto-Bulgars, Vlacs, Slavs, and so on—all contributed to a mix of peoples and practices that, for all their differences, nevertheless present a recognizable cultural form; at least to outsiders. Not only a cultural form, but a grammatical substantive: "balkanization"....
The 2020 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) will explore the continuing contestations of Balkan politics and social life within the broader context of shared religious, cultural, and ethnic histories.... The goal of the Summer School is to provide a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its focus is on understanding the fundamental terms of moral community and its aim is to produce new practices for living together in a world populated by "differences".
The deadline for receiving applications is March 29, 2020.
The Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life
has been organized with the support of:
Plovdiv 2019 Municipal Foundation
CEDAR - Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion
National Scientific Program "Cultural and Historical Heritage, National Memory and Social Development", Ministry of Education and Science, Bulgaria
The Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv