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Continuing Education and Conference Center, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
In recent decades, the relationship between violence and religion has become an increasingly pressing subject of public discourse. These contemporary discussions of “religious violence” have their roots in the cultural and religious traditions of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, and indeed may be said to represent a direct continuation of the inter-group interaction, competition, and, at times, outright antagonism that characterized these societies.
Yet the complexity of this history is too often underestimated or overlooked in the current climate—to the detriment of both historical analysis and mutual understanding.
This three-day academic conference seeks to fill this void by bringing together specialists representing the full range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities of the Greco-Roman world from the Roman period until the rise of Islam (circa 150 bce to 750 ce). This was a formative period, which saw the rise and consolidation of two great empires (the Roman and Sasanian Persian) and the gradual eclipse of traditional Greco-rOman religions in the emergence of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and in their various principal forms.
By examining this rich tapestry of cultures within a comparative framework and exploring the ways that people operating within distinct religious traditions thought about and, in some cases, participated in acts of violence, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of the genealogy of the “religious violence” that continues to have a profound impact on our lives today.
Foundations & Organizations:
Departments and Institutes of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota:
