Time: December 2 | 4 – 5:30p CST
Location: Zoom | Register here. After registering, and our staff confirms the registration, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Join the Interdisciplinary Religion Group for a presentation by Kilian Harrer, a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the UW-Madison. Kilian will talk about a chapter of his dissertation project, titled, “The Politics of Pilgrimage in the French Revolutionary Borderlands (c. 1770-1815).” He will address the evolution of Catholic-Protestant conflict in the border region known today as the Saarland. Throughout the revolutionary era, Catholic communities in this region actively engaged and exploited enlightened anxieties over Catholic ‘backwardness’ and spatial chaos in the borderlands. Pilgrims in particular found new ways to defend religious practices that were meant to impress and provoke their Protestant neighbors.
Kilian Harrer is completing his dissertation in the History Department here at UW-Madison. His current research interests revolve around the relationships and overlaps between politics and religion in the eighteenth century (esp. in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France). In 2018 and 2019, he conducted archival research on the politics of pilgrimage in Europe’s revolutionary borderlands, c. 1770-1815, and he is now in the writing phase of his dissertation. More info on his research and publications here.