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. Italian and European cities were the space of creation and elaboration of social fears; in the last decades fear was related to economy, the environment, the pandemic crisis.
The fear, almost touchable in the streets of the cities, 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
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 social fear and religious answers, fears which were provoked or sublimated by religious fundamentalisms (on line – at school in prisons and in religious places)

Attending Students
1. Notes, Materials discussed during the course
2. M. Graziano Geopolitica della paura oppure Egea, Bocconi, Milano 2021 oppure
M. Bombardieri, M. Giorda, S. Hejazi, Capire l’Islam, Morcelliana Brescia 2019
3. Sessione monografica di Humanitas 2021 su “Ecologia e religioni” (curato da B. Nuti)

Not Attending Students
1. M. Graziano Geopolitica della paura oppure Egea, Bocconi, 2021
2. M. Bombardieri, M. Giorda, S. Hejazi, Capire l’Islam, Morcelliana Brescia 2019
3. G. Filoramo, R. Parrinello, Guarire dal contagio, Morcelliana Brescia 2020
AND Sessione monografica di Humanitas 2021 su “Ecologia e religioni” (ED. B. Nuti)