Shii News – CfP: Taʿzieh, Shared Passions Beyond “Religious Theatre” (Paris, 2-3 June, 2026)

Call for Proposals – Conference Taʿzieh, Shared Passions Beyond “Religious Theatre”, or Rethinking the Performative Ritual Event

International conference in INALCO, Paris France on June 2-3, 2026. Organized by Julie Duvigneau and Yassaman Khajehi (ANR THETA, Inalco, Université Clermont Auvergne, IUF)

This international conference with a starting point based on comparative study of ritual performative events, both historical and contemporary, will focus on taʿzieh while placing it in dialogue within European medieval mystery plays, Christian processions, and other forms of rituals arising from diverse cultural contexts. While grounded in a comparative historical perspective, the conference also welcomes multidisciplinary approaches: cultural studies, anthropology, literature, performance studies, religious studies, and digital humanities. The aim is to confront and enrich reflection on the nature, transmission, and reception of these performative events, as well as their capacity to articulate memory, corporeality, emotion, and communal participation.
The objective is not only to establish formal parallels, but also to question the very descriptive categories of these practices. Expressions such as “religious theatre” or “sacred drama” facilitate their inclusion within the history of the performing arts, yet they also tend to impose a theoretical framework centered on representation, fiction, and aesthetics. However, performance cannot only be reduced to a scenic dispositif in these contexts. Rather, it involves symbolic efficacy, an economy of affects, a territorial inscription, and a social function that exceed theatrical logic in the modern sense.
The conference therefore proposes to privilege the notion of the “performative ritual event” in order to conceive these forms as situated collective actions generating social bonds, memory, and identity through corporeality and participation.

Please submit proposals (in French or English), to yassaman.khajehi@uca.fr and julie.duvigneau@inalco.fr before 15 April 2026.

Posted in: Field-specific (academic)