What is the nature of religion and the revival of ritual in Israel/Palestine? What does it mean politically, culturally, and spatially? Based on ethnographic research Professor Stadler shows how landscapes are re-narrated and re-designed through the prism of rituals surrounding female saints. Female themes, perceptions, feelings, and memories from different pasts and traditions are revived through these rituals. In this context, the masculine order that dominates conflicts, wars, terror, and insecurity is replaced by a female alternative. Female saints and their rituals of fertility, motherhood, and intimacy serve as a counterweight to the instability of life, conflicts and border contestations.

Nurit Stadler is professor at the Sociology and Anthropology Department, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This event is organized by the Diversity Studies Centre Oslo (DISCO) at Oslo Metropolitan University.