Although the first stages of the academic study of religion were largely oriented around institutional sources and contexts in dialogue with the so-called “world religions” (with a particular emphasis on Christianity), the last forty years or so has witnessed an increasing scholarly interest in non-institutional religious settings.
This scholarly shift has produced a new awareness of and fascination with religious objects, texts, and beliefs that figure into everyday life — what is now generally known as lived religion. This focus on quotidian religion requires multi-disciplinary academic approaches that take seriously the overlapping dimensions of everyday existence, such as the body and its entanglements with the material world; the roles of religious competition and specialization; the ways gender and race figure into religious formation and practice; and the relationships between space/landscape and religion.
The Center for the Study of Lived Religion (CSLR) foregrounds academic analysis of the everyday religious practices of people – both past and present – from around the world. This center will support the study of all so-called world religious traditions (as well as those that fall outside this rubric), while simultaneously encouraging critical reflection on the boundaries of/between those traditions and on foundational rubrics in religious studies, including the category religion itself.
The CSLR is committed to supporting research on all aspects of lived religion through academic conferences, lectures, and popular-level talks.
Beginning in 2024, the CSLR will also host a peer-reviewed academic journal: "Quotidiana: Journal for the Study of Lived Religion".
Quotidiana: Journal for the Study of Lived Religion is an interdisciplinary, biannual, open-access journal published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari Digital Publishing. Quotidiana, which is the official publication of the Center for the Study of Lived Religion at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, is dedicated to the academic study of the everyday religious practices of people – both past and present – from around the world. Although the journal will accept papers on a wide range of topics related to lived religion, it focuses on six central, comparative aspects of quotidian practice:
Quotidiana will also privilege studies on material artifacts (e.g., amulets, tokens, and manuscripts), archaeological contexts, and religious performances as well as papers that offer critical assessments of the primary terms, theories, and methods in the study of lived religion. In sum, Quotidiana constitutes an interdisciplinary venue for examining lived religious beliefs, experiences, performances, and interactions critically and comparatively within and across all traditions, regions, and times.
Director
Joseph E. Sanzo (Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles [2012]) is an Associate Professor of History of Religions in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is also Principal Investigator of a European Research Council Starting Grant project (Early Jewish and Christian Magical Traditions in Comparison and Contact; grant agreement No. 851466 EJCM). Prof. Sanzo is the author of "Ritual boundaries: magic and differentiation in late antique Christianity" (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2024) and "Scriptural incipits on amulets from late antique Egypt: text, typology, and theory" (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
Researcher
Jacopo Scarin (Ph.D., Chinese University of Hong Kong [2017]) is Tenure Track Researcher at the Department of Asian and North African Studies of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His research focuses on late imperial Chinese religion and Daoism as well as the contemporary religiosity of the Chinese diaspora in Italy. He is presently conducting his research on Late Imperial Chinese religiosity and conversion at the National University of Singapore: the project is funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Global Fellowship (2024-2026). Dr. Scarin is the author of The Tongbai palace and its Daoist communities: A History (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2023) and of several peer-reviewed articles, including “Social and ritual networks in Southeast China during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, Studies in Chinese Religions 8 (2022): 367-384, “Praticare la religione durante la pandemia: mutamenti nella Comunità Evangelica Cinese padovana causati dal COVID” in Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Orientale 1 (2022): 779-801 and “Longmen institutional development in Zhejiang Province: the Chongdao lineage of the Tongbai palace during the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of Chinese Religions 47 (2019): 1-32.
Researcher
Dr. Talin (Ph.D. the University of Amsterdam and the EHESS, Paris [2024]) is Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Lived Religion in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Cà Foscari. She is also an associate member at the Cermes3. Her research focuses on the circulation and reinvention of ritual and therapeutic uses of the Amazonian brew ayahuasca, with particular attention to its transmission from Brazil throughout the world. Her postdoctoral project looks at the changes to ayahuasca ritual practices that have taken place in Italy after the legal ban, focusing on ritual and everyday practices as well as personal trajectories. Dr. Talin is the author of scientific and non-academic publications, including “Healing with the brew: Ayahuasca’s Reconfiguration of “Addiction” (eds. Labate & Cavnar, Ayahuasca Healing and Science, Springer, 2021), and “Terra Sacra. L’arte di ricostruire un legame” (a cura di Arensi, Terra Sacra. L’arte necessaria. Luoghi, comunità, esistenze. SKIRA, 2021).
