Srdjan Sremac
I am an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion at the same university. I hold the position of a research fellow and a member of the management team at the PACS (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). I am widely published with 16 (co-) authored or edited books and over 60 journal articles and book chapters. Furthermore, I serves as the managing editor of Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan). My primary research focus is on lived religion from both theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. I also research and write on theory and method in the study of religion. My interdisciplinary research interests encompass a wide range of topics, including religion and sexuality, war-related trauma, religion and extreme violence, lived religion of marginalized groups, material culture/religion, religion and heritage, 'non-western' art and culture, visual ethnography, and post-conflict reconciliation studies. I also teach at Amsterdam University College.
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Books by Srdjan Sremac
We encourage explorations of practices grounded in lived religious subjectivities/imaginaries and commitments to disrupt and resist trauma through 'wild devotion,' where multiple ontologies converge in these novel commemorative ritual spaces. When religious practices and material objects, along with the forms of belonging they foster undergo a process of both secularization and resacralization. This duality is why 'wild devotion' consistently serves as a facilitator of transcendence, transcending its own nature.
This Special Issue of Religions will focus on trauma and lived religion in times of pandemic. In particular, we seek to explore the implications of bringing trauma and religion together, so as to increase our understanding of the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times; and the ways in which individuals and communities negotiate, transfigure, and transcend traumatic events and radical situations of anxiety, uncertainty, and vulnerability.
The current pandemic has impacted religious practices and responses in various ways. As the pandemic interrupts life and reconfigures the ways we see, know, understand, and engage with the world, lived religious world-making processes involve negotiations of various relationships between body, community, fear of death, anxiety, coping mechanisms, meaning, and the sacred. These processes take place in a realm where earlier taken-for-granted references have been traumatically interrupted and stripped of their previous significations. Lived religious subjectivities can, however, inform post-traumatic coping mechanisms, significantly contribute to the re-envisioning of traumatic responses, and open a regenerative realm of action, coping, and resilience.
The aim of the Special Issue is, therefore, to bring together scholars from different areas, disciplines, and interests to explore the links between lived religion and trauma studies in the context of pandemic times. Using lived religion as an approach to the interdisciplinary study of trauma allows for a wider interpretation of meaning and also provides an opportunity for a better understanding of spirituality, resilience, hope, anxiety, meaning making, religious coping, and rituals. It is this lived experience that itself invites an interdisciplinary approach and more inclusive and nuanced interpretations. Granting recent scholarly developments in attending to the disrupting power of traumatic experiences and its influence on lived religious world making, a profound reflection on the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times is called for.
We invite contributions to this Special Issue based on empirical research and innovative theoretical constructions. We also hope that this Special Issue will inspire new topics and frameworks in the study of lived religion, trauma, and pandemics as possible sites of new knowledge production. Researchers from the social sciences, humanities, religious studies, and practical/empirical theology are invited to contribute to this volume.
Topics might include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
Public health and religion;
Collective trauma, uncertainty, and resilience;
The esthetics of illness and trauma;
The history of plagues and religion;
Materiality, lived religion, and pandemics;
Pandemics, trauma, and rituals;
The politics of trauma and pandemics;
Conspiracy theories, trauma, and religion;
Theology of illness and trauma;
Finding meaning in uncertain times (religious, spiritual, and secular);
Digital ethnography, trauma, and pandemics;
Lived religion, fear of death, and trauma;
Religious coping and pandemics;
Trauma, communities, and pandemics;
Religion and vaccination.
Dr. Srdjan Sremac
Mrs. Lenneke Post
Guest Editors
With an interdisciplinary approach to the study of conversion, the collection provides an opportunity for a better understanding of lived religion, guilt, shame, hope, forgiveness, narrative identity reconstruction, religious coping, religious conversion and spiritual transformation. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of lived religion, religious conversion, recovery, homelessness, and substance dependence.
Adopts the general framework of everyday lived religion as the ethnographic and hermeneutical background for understanding the performative dimensions of ‘religion-in-action’
Critically correlates the experience of trauma with lived religious realities, symbols, texts, religious stories, contemplative practices and transcendental material/aesthetic meaning-making
We encourage explorations of practices grounded in lived religious subjectivities/imaginaries and commitments to disrupt and resist trauma through 'wild devotion,' where multiple ontologies converge in these novel commemorative ritual spaces. When religious practices and material objects, along with the forms of belonging they foster undergo a process of both secularization and resacralization. This duality is why 'wild devotion' consistently serves as a facilitator of transcendence, transcending its own nature.
This Special Issue of Religions will focus on trauma and lived religion in times of pandemic. In particular, we seek to explore the implications of bringing trauma and religion together, so as to increase our understanding of the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times; and the ways in which individuals and communities negotiate, transfigure, and transcend traumatic events and radical situations of anxiety, uncertainty, and vulnerability.
The current pandemic has impacted religious practices and responses in various ways. As the pandemic interrupts life and reconfigures the ways we see, know, understand, and engage with the world, lived religious world-making processes involve negotiations of various relationships between body, community, fear of death, anxiety, coping mechanisms, meaning, and the sacred. These processes take place in a realm where earlier taken-for-granted references have been traumatically interrupted and stripped of their previous significations. Lived religious subjectivities can, however, inform post-traumatic coping mechanisms, significantly contribute to the re-envisioning of traumatic responses, and open a regenerative realm of action, coping, and resilience.
The aim of the Special Issue is, therefore, to bring together scholars from different areas, disciplines, and interests to explore the links between lived religion and trauma studies in the context of pandemic times. Using lived religion as an approach to the interdisciplinary study of trauma allows for a wider interpretation of meaning and also provides an opportunity for a better understanding of spirituality, resilience, hope, anxiety, meaning making, religious coping, and rituals. It is this lived experience that itself invites an interdisciplinary approach and more inclusive and nuanced interpretations. Granting recent scholarly developments in attending to the disrupting power of traumatic experiences and its influence on lived religious world making, a profound reflection on the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times is called for.
We invite contributions to this Special Issue based on empirical research and innovative theoretical constructions. We also hope that this Special Issue will inspire new topics and frameworks in the study of lived religion, trauma, and pandemics as possible sites of new knowledge production. Researchers from the social sciences, humanities, religious studies, and practical/empirical theology are invited to contribute to this volume.
Topics might include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
Public health and religion;
Collective trauma, uncertainty, and resilience;
The esthetics of illness and trauma;
The history of plagues and religion;
Materiality, lived religion, and pandemics;
Pandemics, trauma, and rituals;
The politics of trauma and pandemics;
Conspiracy theories, trauma, and religion;
Theology of illness and trauma;
Finding meaning in uncertain times (religious, spiritual, and secular);
Digital ethnography, trauma, and pandemics;
Lived religion, fear of death, and trauma;
Religious coping and pandemics;
Trauma, communities, and pandemics;
Religion and vaccination.
Dr. Srdjan Sremac
Mrs. Lenneke Post
Guest Editors
With an interdisciplinary approach to the study of conversion, the collection provides an opportunity for a better understanding of lived religion, guilt, shame, hope, forgiveness, narrative identity reconstruction, religious coping, religious conversion and spiritual transformation. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of lived religion, religious conversion, recovery, homelessness, and substance dependence.
Adopts the general framework of everyday lived religion as the ethnographic and hermeneutical background for understanding the performative dimensions of ‘religion-in-action’
Critically correlates the experience of trauma with lived religious realities, symbols, texts, religious stories, contemplative practices and transcendental material/aesthetic meaning-making