Enfilade

This session is part of next year’s EAHN conference; the full Call for Papers is available here:

Religious Enlightenment(s): Spirituality and Space in the Long Eighteenth Century

Session at the Conference of the European Architectural History Network, Aarhus, 17–21 June 2026

Chair: Demetra Vogiatzaki

Proposals due by 19 September 2025

In recent decades, the traditional view of the Enlightenment as a period of radical secularization and material monism has been substantially revised. Scholars such as David Sorkin, Jonathan Israel, Catherine Maire, Paschalis Kitromilides, and Robert Darnton have emphasized the enduring and multifaceted role of religion and spirituality—across both institutional and popular expressions—in shaping the politics, culture, and everyday life of the long eighteenth century. Architectural surveys of the period, however, have often lagged behind this historiographical turn, overlooking the importance of religion and spirituality in the shaping of Enlightenment culture, limiting their scope to a strictly formal analysis, or dismissing non-sanctified spaces and experiences of spirituality as anomalies in the progressive, inevitable ‘disenchantment’ of the world.

This session invites papers that explore the political, social, and aesthetic resonances of sacred space in the Enlightenment. From little studied state-sponsored and public programs, all the way to local, vernacular and/or intimate expressions of sacrality, how did architecture and the built environment broad-writ reflect or resist evolving religious identities, dogmatic debates, and communal rituals? Following the lead of such studies as Karsten Harries’ work on Bavarian Rococo Churches, or Ünver Rüstem’s reading of Ottoman Baroque forms and their entanglement with local Christian and Islamic traditions, the goal is to integrate formal analysis with socio-politically embedded approaches, foregrounding spatial practices that have often been overlooked in dominant narratives of Enlightenment architecture.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:
• Patronage networks and sacred architecture in diasporic or commercial communities, as in the port towns of the Mediterranean.
• Reused or re-interpreted religious sites in post-Jesuit or post-missionary contexts (i.e. in the Ethiopian highlands).
• Syncretic religious spaces shaped by colonial conquest and negotiation, as for example, in and around the settlements of New France.
• Ephemeral structures associated with pilgrimage, mourning, or ritual performance.
• Staged sacred environments in Enlightenment theatre, festivals, and visual culture.
• Interfaith collaborations and architectural vocabularies in multi-confessional settings.

We particularly encourage proposals that attend to sacred experiences and spatial practices beyond the bounds of formal religious architecture, and that consider the ways in which spiritual expression operated through, and resisted Enlightenment-era aesthetics. Abstracts are invited by 19 September 2025, 23.59 CET. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted directly to the chair, along with the applicant’s name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number, and a short curriculum vitae.

Chair
Dr. Demetra Vogiatzaki, gta/ETH Zurich
vogiatzaki@arch.ethz.ch