International Workshop (online and on-site)

The Whole World in a Book - Encyclopaedic Trends and Orders of Knowledge in Jewish and Other Premodern Traditions

 

Lausanne, Switzerland, 24-25 June 2024 (AND fully hybrid/online)

Sponsor: RFE-Research Network "Betwen Encyclopaedia and Epitome" (U. Tübingen, UCL, FU Berlin)

Co-sponsor: Institut romand des sciences bibliques (IRSB), Université de Lausanne

Organizers: Lennart Lehmhaus (IJS, UT). Markham J. Geller (IJS, UCL), David Hamidovic (UniL, IRSB)

Program/Poster: https://kurzlinks.de/r1mk

 

Registration: for online and on-site participation, please register with dario.barberis@unil.ch

Contact: lennart.lehmhaus@uni-tuebingen.de; m.geller@ucl.ac.uk

 

SCHEDULE

 FIRST DAY: MONDAY, 24 JUNE 2024

Venue: UniL (Lausanne University), Anthropole building, room 5033 (5^th floor);

Quartier Dorigny, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

 

13:45    Arrival/Registration/Welcome

14:15    Introduction

              Mark Geller (UCL/ UniL)

14:30    Session 1: The whole world … - encyclopaedism and claims to comprehensiveness

Mattias Brand (U. Zürich), Between Systematizing and Situational Knowledge: Manichaean Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything (in-person)

Caroline Humfress (U. St. Andrews), “A way of thinking and talking about everything”: Junillus Africanus on Legal Exegesis and (Christian) Divine Law (online)

 

16:00    Coffee Break

 

16:30    Session 2: Compilational strategies, strategies of knowledge making and encyclopaedic texts

Farina Marx (U. Düsseldorf), The Art of Selective Encyclopedism in Rabbinic Literature (online)

Hillel Feuerstein (FU Berlin/ BIU, Israel), Gathering Fragments, Recomposing Homilies: The Omissions in Zoharic Literature (in-person)

 

18:15    Session 3a Alternatives to the encyclopaedic format

Stefanie Rudolf (Tübingen), No need for an encyclopedia? – the rationale of Syriac medical collections (online)

 

Ca. 19:30 Dinner (for speakers only)

 

SECOND DAY: TUESDAY, 25 June 2024

Venue: UniL (Lausanne University), Anthropole building, room 5033 (5^th floor);

Quartier Dorigny, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

 

9:30      Session 3b: Alternative encyclopaedic formats

Lilian Larsen, Encyclopedic Wisdom of Monks and Rabbis (in-person)

 

10:15    Coffee Break

 

10:45 Session 4: Cultural, religious and political contexts of encyclopaedic projects

Thomas Benfey (U. Tübingen), Khusrō I's Words in Dēnkard IV: Encyclopedism or Iranism (in-person)

Lennart Lehmhaus (U. Tübingen), Mountain hanging by a thread/Bowels hanging on three teeth - encyclopaedism and Talmudic knowledge production (in-person)

 

12:15    Lunch Break (paid for speakers only but all are invited to join)

 

13:45 Session 5: New world order(s)? Encyclopaedic projects and world-making

Andrea Gondos (U. Rochester), Sacred Encyclopedias: Competing Models of Esoteric Knowledge Organization in Judaism (in-person)

Regula Forster (U. Tübingen), The order of the world in a book. A natural encyclopaedia by the 14th-century alchemist Aydamir al-Jildakī (online)

 

15:15    Coffee Break

 

15:45    Session 6: Catalogues and libraries – encyclopaedic materialities and memory

Monika Amsler (U. Bern), The Encyclopedia as Library and the Library as Encyclopedia: On the Material Aspects of Worldmaking (in-person)

Katerina Oikomenopoulou (U. Patras), Catalogues, memory and epic in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (online)

 

17:15 Closing remarks

18:15 Dinner (for speakers only)