Annual seminars
The Archive intends to continue the experience of annual seminars which Ries himself inaugurated around the topic of the homo religiosus. Every year an International Seminar is organised, dedicated to a topic particularly relevant to the matters covered by Ries’s studies. The Seminars held to date have been dedicated to the following subjects:
Monumentum. Living, the political, the sacred (27 April 2010)
A reflection on the "monument" as an expression of the symbolic foundations of human society and of its links with living and power.
Speakers: C. Barbier-Kontler, C. Cannuyer, M.A. Crippa, D. Domenici, P. Nicolin, S. Petrosino.
The Wind, the Spirit, the Ghost (15 November 2011)
A reflection on the symbol of the air/spirit as a fundamental hierophany of the religious experience, dealt with both in its traditional manifestations and in some contemporary degenerations.
Speakers: Y. Coppens, P. Gilbert, P. Nicelli, M. Magatti, P. Trianni, I. Bargna.
The Festival. Gathering, recognising, losing oneself (13 novembre 2012)
Men have always met to recognise each other, talk of themselves and thus establish their cultural identity, by celebrating the link between the human and the divine. The festival represents one of the fundamental and constitutive moments of such an encounter.
Speakers: P. Alborghetti, C. Barbier-Kontler, C. Bernardi, G. Curatola, F. Facchini, N. Spineto.
Julien Ries: the challenges of symbolic anthropology (20 November 2013)
The Seminar paid homage to the figure and the work of the great Belgian historian and anthropologist of religions Julien Ries, in the year of his death. The day of study took stock of his thought, emphasising the central position of the notion of homo religiosus perfected by him, and of symbolic anthropology as a key discipline for understanding man’s religious and existential experience.
Speakers: C. Cannuyer, F. Facchini, D. Navarria, S. Petrosino, G. Sfameni Gasparro, N. Spineto.
The Myth. Meaning, nature, topicality (11 November 2014)
The Seminar focused on the topic of the myth as a means of narrative-symbolic mediation between the space of the human and the opening of the sacred. The Myth was studied both in relation to anthropological-cultural contexts traditionally linked to it such as religion and philosophy, and in terms of reading of the “mythical” or “mythological” aspects that act unconsciously in some manifestations of contemporary culture and society.
Speakers: C. Cannuyer, A. Filonenko, C. Giaccardi, C. Modonesi, A. Pelissero, N. Spineto, S. Ubbiali.
Religion. Nature, tensions, perspectives (17 November 2015)
On this occasion the topic dealt with was religion in its constant, dynamic relationship with religiousness (or “experience of the sacred”). If, on the one hand, religion can be thought of and lived as a fecund home of the clergyman, on the other hand it always incurs the risk of turning into a means for the corruption of the clergyman himself.
Speakers: J. Maïla, R. Nanini, S. Ubbiali, P. Branca, I. Buttitta, P. Lia, G. Chiaramonte.
The Archive, with the intention of testifying to the manifold nature of Julien Ries’s studies, cultivates an international multidisciplinary vocation which has led it to collaborate with renowned foreign researchers belonging to numerous and diverse scientific-disciplinary sectors: we can name, by way of example, the palaeoanthropologist Yves Coppens, one of the discoverers of australopithecus Lucy, the archaeologist Emmanuel Anati, the former Iranian ambassador to Paris Majid Rahnema, the professor of geopolitics Joseph Maïla, advisor to the French ministry of Foreign Affairs, the orientalist Christian Cannuyer, the sinologist Christine Barbier-Kontler.
