Università Roma Tre

An historical perspective on religions must take into consideration their multi-layered presence on the territory and must be able to analyze dynamics and strategies: since 2007 more than a half of the global population lives in urban areas and cities have become the privileged space of contestations, conflicts, negotiation of interests, creation of symbolic and capital resources concerning religions. In cities innovations, waves and tendencies concerning beliefs and religious practices are produced and reproduced.
The pandemia in which we have been deeply immerged, has made visible a concept which is typically linked to history of religions: the fear. The fear, almost touchable in the streets of the cities all over the world, is related to religion in a double way; from one side every religion was born from the fear of the loose/impossibility of controlling life, death, illness, pain, the end and often it is an answer to this feeling and to worries; for these reasons, 2020 lockdown did not affirmed the end of religion but a reformulation and adaptation to the time we are living.
From the other side, religions produce fear, in the case of violence which arises in their name but also due to collective imaginaries which feed clichés, stereotypes, in particular towards minorities.
This course offers some historical examples of religion such as an antidote to fear and religion such as virus of fear, in particular related to the topic of religious fundamentalisms (on line – at school in prisons and in religious places) and simplifications, stereotypes and fears related to religion.
This course is interconnected with “Movimenti e tendenze dell’islam contemporaneo” L-OR/10 of Professor Gennaro Gervasio

Studenti frequentanti:
1. Notes taken and readings suggested during the course (see uploaded materials)
2. C. Russo, A. Saggioro, Roma città plurale, Bulzoni, Roma 2017.
or M. Bombardieri, M. Giorda, S. Hejazi, Capire l’Islam, Morcelliana Brescia 2019.



Non-attending students have to replace point 1 with the following:
G. Filoramo, R. Parrinello, Guarire dal contagio, Morcelliana Brescia 2020 or
M. Graziano, Guerra santa e santa alleanza, religioni e disordine internazionale nel XXI secolo, Il Mulino, Bologna 2014.