Anja Kirsch
About
About me
I hold an MA in the study of religions (religionsvitenskap), history, and German literature from the University of Hannover, Germany, and a Ph.D. degree in the study of religions from the University of Basel, Switzerland. In our department, I am responsible for the Introduction to Christianity lecture in the fall term (RVI1050: Innføring i kristendommen) and the Religion and Politics class in the spring term (RVI2195: Religion og politikk). I have also taught the MA theory class (RVI3010: Vitenskapsteori og teoriarbeid), a class on imaginations of a better world and religious and secular utopias (RVI2151), and a digital class on utopias, past and present (co-taught with Andrea Rota, University of Bern, now UIO).
Research
My research areas include the relationship between religion and “the secular” in contemporary and historical perspective, utopia and migration in nineteenth-century European religious history, narrative and cognitive approaches and theories of religious efficacy, and the conceptual history and historical semantics of "religion". I am the PI of the research project Religious and Secular Worldmaking: Narrative Cultures of Utopian Emigration and the Formation of Modern Regimes of Attention (NC-RoA), funded by the Research Council of Norway (FRIPRO), project website: https://www.ntnu.edu/nc-roa
Secular cultures
In my book (Weltanschauung als Erzählkultur, 2016), I analyze moral and character education in a secular state by examining the narrative construction of the socialist worldview in relation to religion in East German civics school textbooks. The book is a narratological study of school textbooks and develops an approach for comparing secular and religious narrative cultures in personal and state-controlled contexts. The analysis illustrates how socialism was construed through a set of narrative strategies used to impart the Marxist-Leninist worldview, making it plausible and relatable to citizens’ daily concerns. The historical section of the study includes a detailed analysis of socialist narratives, while its theoretical framework examines the academic discourse on socialism and religion and discusses the politics of classification.
Narrative analysis and the study of religions as narrative cultures
Working with narratological analysis has resulted in the development of narrative cultures as a conceptual framework for historical and ethnographic studies of religion. In addition to classic text-based studies, this approach highlights acts of storytelling, the strategic use of narrative, and its effect on imagination to explain how storytelling in religious contexts serves to augment reality. A resulting anthology Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion (co-edited with Dirk Johannsen and Jens Kreinath) documents religious storytelling practices in diverse historical and cultural settings in light of approaches to materiality, performance, embodiment, and cognition.
Utopia in the long 19th-century European history of religion
My ongoing research examines nineteenth-century utopias as driving forces in the European history of religion. In relation to current questions of social and economic fairness, emigration, environmentalism, and the critique of capitalism, I investigate the role of religion in early nineteenth-century debates about social, economic, and political visions of a better world. At that time, ideas of radical change were a playground for those criticizing religion and drafting new forms of earthly society, as well as for those envisioning a new Christianity as the foundation of a new world. Both promoted their own visions of a new society and distanced themselves from each other, but this was during a time when the modern religious/secular distinction had not yet been established. A core question of my research is thus how the agents involved classified their utopias before the binary religious/secular model had become available to them as an interpretative framework, and how this model eventually emerged from their everyday experiences and classifications.
Research
RESEARCH PROJECT
Religious and Secular Worldmaking: Narrative Cultures of Utopian Emigration and the Formation of Modern Regimes of Attention (NC-RoA)
Funded by the Research Council of Norway, Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal (2022), Groundbreaking research (FRIPRO) Project number: 334603
Volume: NOK 10,776,000
Starting date: July 1, 2023
Project partners: Dirk Johannsen, UIO; Terje Mikael Hasle Joranger, Norwegian Emigrant Museum; Ph.D. (Trym Sundby), Ph.D. (Stian Sivertsen)
Project summary
Do religious and secular people experience the world differently? Our research project NC-RoA examines this question by focusing on the nineteenth century, a time when narrative cultures were diverging and a shared reality seemed to be breaking down. This led to the emergence of conceptual binaries—such as faith vs. science, political left vs. right, and capitalist vs. communist—that shaped European discussions about "modernity."
Recent debates on social media bubbles, mainstream media, and misleading information suggest that society is becoming increasingly polarized, with many people seeing their opponents as unreachable through rational argument or evidence. NC-RoA investigates these dynamics in a historical setting to study the cognitive processes that lead to drifting perceptions of the world.
We're interested in the story worlds of early nineteenth-century utopians who emigrated from Europe to the US in order to create or participate in utopian societies. From the perspective of European observers, these radical attempts to establish a divine economy, create a new moral world, establish a new Zion, or build a communist paradise were seen as social experiments that modeled modern society, economy, and the future of religion. Our sources show how emigrants' perceptions of the world and society changed as they encountered each other in the "promised land." Conceptual distinctions began to emerge as utopians of all types reframed their individual experiences of the New World as religious positions.
NC-RoA studies the narrative cultures of utopian emigration as regimes of attention, structures suited to control, regulate, or guide people's perception of the world. Drawing on recent models from cognitive science, we analyze how narrative practices described and prescribed alternative ways of modulating attention that were foundational to modern practices of world-making.
Publications
2024
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Towards a global history of religion: reflections on Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz's "Lamas and Shamans".
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Editorial
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2024)
Vernacular utopia.
Religion
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Religion and utopia: a critical overview of the field.
Religion
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Towards a global history of religion: editors' note.
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Academic article
2023
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2023)
Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter)
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
2022
-
Rota, Andrea;
Kirsch, Anja;
Monnot, Christophe;
Krüger, Oliver.
(2022)
AЯGOS—Introducing a New Journal in the Study of Religion.
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Academic article
2021
-
Batmunkh, Mungunchimeg;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2021)
The Shugden-Controversy in Contemporary Mongolia: Preliminary Findings from an Explanatory Field Study.
Inner Asia
Academic article
2020
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2020)
Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. An Introduction.
Brill Academic Publishers
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja;
Kreinath, Jens.
(2020)
Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion.
Brill Academic Publishers
Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (14)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja;
Kreinath, Jens.
(2020)
Preface.
Brill Academic Publishers
Foreword
2019
-
Rota, Andrea;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Introductory Remarks: Turning an Academic Conference into a Master’s Seminar.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Kirsch, Anja;
Käbisch, David.
(2019)
Religion and Educational Research: National Traditions and Transnational Perspectives.
Waxmann Verlag
Religious Diversity and Education in Europe (39)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Religion in Secular Education: The Case of the German Democratic Republic.
Waxmann Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Benes, Jakub.
(2019)
Socialist Imaginations: Introduction.
Routledge
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Kirsch, Anja;
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Benes, Jakub.
(2019)
Socialist Imaginations: Utopias, Myths, and the Masses.
Routledge
Routledge studies in modern history (.)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2019)
Multiple Religious Identities: Students’ Interviews with Keynote Speakers of the 2018 EASR Conference – Introductory Remarks: Turning an Academic Conference into a Master’s Seminar.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Narrative Strategies.
Bloomsbury Academic
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
2018
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
Weltanschauungen im Schulbuch: Religionswissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf DDR Staatsbürgerkundelehrbücher.
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
“‘…und einen Teufel gibt es nicht in unserer Republik!’ Aberglaube, Religion und Atheismus im Weltanschauungsdiskurs der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik“.
Campus Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
From Biological to Moral Immortality: The Utopian Dimension of Socialist Work Ethics.
Springer Berlin/Heidelberg
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
"Red" Catechisms: Socialist Educational Literature and the Demarcation of Religion and Politics in the Early Nineteenth Century.
Religion
Academic article
2017
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Contesting Labels and the Study of Religion.
Equinox Publishing
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Religiöse Identitätsbildung.
Verlag J. B. Metzler
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Religious in Form, Socialist in Content: Socialist Narratives and the Question of Civil Religion.
Journal of Religion in Europe
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Zugänge zur Religionsgeschichte Europas: ein Beitrag aus der didaktischen Praxis zur Konzeptualisierung religionsgeschichtlicher Einführungsveranstaltungen.
Zeitschrift für Religionskunde - Revue de didactique des sciences des religions
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Failed Theory, Cynicism, and the Study of Religion.
Bulletin for the Study of Religion
Academic article
2016
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
Weltanschauung als Erzählkultur: Zur Konstruktion von Religion und Sozialismus in Staatsbürgerkundeschulbüchern der DDR.
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Critical Studies in Religion/ Religionswissenschaft (CSRRW) (2)
Academic monograph
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
The History of Religions, Read as Fantasy: On the Construction of (Religious) Ambiguity in the TV Show Lost.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC)
Academic article
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
The history of religions read as fantasy: On the construction of (religious) ambiguity in the television show lost.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC)
Academic article
2015
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2015)
'Religion' als Stilmittel der Fantastik. Eine wirkungstheoretische Betrachtung der Fernsehserie LOST.
Pano Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
2013
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2013)
Lamas and Shamans: Mongolian Orders of Knowledge from the Early 17th to the 21st Century. A Contribution to the Debate on Non-European Concepts of Religion.
Uppsala universitet
Chapter Translation
2008
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2008)
Religionen im Realsozialismus: Widerspruch oder Tatsache? Eine wissenschaftliche Expertise zum aktuellen Forschungsstand.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
2007
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2007)
Bestattungskultur im Wandel: einige diskursanalytische Überlegungen.
LIT Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Journal publications
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Towards a global history of religion: reflections on Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz's "Lamas and Shamans".
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Editorial
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2024)
Vernacular utopia.
Religion
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Religion and utopia: a critical overview of the field.
Religion
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2024)
Towards a global history of religion: editors' note.
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Academic article
-
Rota, Andrea;
Kirsch, Anja;
Monnot, Christophe;
Krüger, Oliver.
(2022)
AЯGOS—Introducing a New Journal in the Study of Religion.
AЯGOS: Perspectives in the Study of Religion
Academic article
-
Batmunkh, Mungunchimeg;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2021)
The Shugden-Controversy in Contemporary Mongolia: Preliminary Findings from an Explanatory Field Study.
Inner Asia
Academic article
-
Rota, Andrea;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Introductory Remarks: Turning an Academic Conference into a Master’s Seminar.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2019)
Multiple Religious Identities: Students’ Interviews with Keynote Speakers of the 2018 EASR Conference – Introductory Remarks: Turning an Academic Conference into a Master’s Seminar.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
"Red" Catechisms: Socialist Educational Literature and the Demarcation of Religion and Politics in the Early Nineteenth Century.
Religion
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Religious in Form, Socialist in Content: Socialist Narratives and the Question of Civil Religion.
Journal of Religion in Europe
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Zugänge zur Religionsgeschichte Europas: ein Beitrag aus der didaktischen Praxis zur Konzeptualisierung religionsgeschichtlicher Einführungsveranstaltungen.
Zeitschrift für Religionskunde - Revue de didactique des sciences des religions
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Failed Theory, Cynicism, and the Study of Religion.
Bulletin for the Study of Religion
Academic article
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
The History of Religions, Read as Fantasy: On the Construction of (Religious) Ambiguity in the TV Show Lost.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC)
Academic article
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
The history of religions read as fantasy: On the construction of (religious) ambiguity in the television show lost.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC)
Academic article
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2008)
Religionen im Realsozialismus: Widerspruch oder Tatsache? Eine wissenschaftliche Expertise zum aktuellen Forschungsstand.
ZjR - Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft
Academic article
Books
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja;
Kreinath, Jens.
(2020)
Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion.
Brill Academic Publishers
Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (14)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Kirsch, Anja;
Käbisch, David.
(2019)
Religion and Educational Research: National Traditions and Transnational Perspectives.
Waxmann Verlag
Religious Diversity and Education in Europe (39)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Kirsch, Anja;
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Benes, Jakub.
(2019)
Socialist Imaginations: Utopias, Myths, and the Masses.
Routledge
Routledge studies in modern history (.)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2016)
Weltanschauung als Erzählkultur: Zur Konstruktion von Religion und Sozialismus in Staatsbürgerkundeschulbüchern der DDR.
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Critical Studies in Religion/ Religionswissenschaft (CSRRW) (2)
Academic monograph
Part of book/report
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2023)
Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter)
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2020)
Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. An Introduction.
Brill Academic Publishers
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja;
Kreinath, Jens.
(2020)
Preface.
Brill Academic Publishers
Foreword
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Religion in Secular Education: The Case of the German Democratic Republic.
Waxmann Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Arvidsson, Stefan;
Benes, Jakub.
(2019)
Socialist Imaginations: Introduction.
Routledge
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2019)
Narrative Strategies.
Bloomsbury Academic
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
Weltanschauungen im Schulbuch: Religionswissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf DDR Staatsbürgerkundelehrbücher.
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
“‘…und einen Teufel gibt es nicht in unserer Republik!’ Aberglaube, Religion und Atheismus im Weltanschauungsdiskurs der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik“.
Campus Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2018)
From Biological to Moral Immortality: The Utopian Dimension of Socialist Work Ethics.
Springer Berlin/Heidelberg
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Contesting Labels and the Study of Religion.
Equinox Publishing
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2017)
Religiöse Identitätsbildung.
Verlag J. B. Metzler
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Johannsen, Dirk;
Kirsch, Anja.
(2015)
'Religion' als Stilmittel der Fantastik. Eine wirkungstheoretische Betrachtung der Fernsehserie LOST.
Pano Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
-
Kirsch, Anja.
(2007)
Bestattungskultur im Wandel: einige diskursanalytische Überlegungen.
LIT Verlag
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
OVERSETTELSESARB
-
Kirsch, Anja;
Rota, Andrea.
(2013)
Lamas and Shamans: Mongolian Orders of Knowledge from the Early 17th to the 21st Century. A Contribution to the Debate on Non-European Concepts of Religion.
Uppsala universitet
Chapter Translation
Teaching
Courses
I have been teaching for more than fifteen years at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My experience includes tutorials, BA and MA seminars, colloquia, and lectures. I have taught introductory courses to the European history of religion; the relation between religion and politics; theories and concepts of religion; and the history of religious studies as well as generic skills courses.
In Trondheim, I am responsible for the Introduction to Christianity (RVI1050) and the Religion and Politics class (RVI2195).
Selection of courses taught
BA level
Introduction to Classical Thinkers and Theories of Religion
Unbelief, the Criticism of Religion, and Atheism in the European History of Religions
Do We Need Religion to Be and to Do Good? Religion & Ethics in Concepts of Education
Religion, Science, Politics, and the Role of the Academy
Religion in the “Nonreligious” State – European Examples
Terror, Game, and Ritual Enactment: Basics of a Comparative Anthropology of Religion
Conceptions of Death and Funeral Rites within “World Religions”
Introduction to the World Religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam
MA level
Religious Utopias in Past and Present (hybrid course, with Andrea Rota)
Standard and Deviation in the European History of Religions
Civil Religion, Political Religion, Surrogate Religion, Implicit Religion or: How to Describe the Modern Relation Between Religion and Politics?
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Nineteenth-Century Criticism of Religion
Departure to a Better World: Emigrant Utopias in Nineteenth-Century European Religious History
Cultural-Studies Approaches to the History of Religions: The Salem Witch Trials
Imaginations of a Pagan Past in the European History of Religions
Fictions of the Magician: Occultism and Literature (with Dirk Johannsen)
Lectures
RVI1050: Introduction to Christianity (NTNU Trondheim)
RVI2195: Religion and Politics (NTNU Trondheim)
RVI3010: Theoretical Approaches and Philosophy of Science in the Study of Religion (NTNU Trondheim)
Introduction to World Religions: Hinduism & Buddhism (University of Dublin, Trinity College)
Contemporary Theories of Religion (University of Dublin, Trinity College)
Outreach
2024
-
Academic lectureKirsch, Anja. (2024) Worldviews or worldmaking? Experiences in a frontier settlement. European Association for the Study of Religions 21st Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions , Gothenburg 2024-08-19 - 2024-08-23
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Academic lectureKirsch, Anja. (2024) Distinctions before the distinction: early 19th-century emigration as a site of the upcoming religious/secular divide. University of Munich History and the Secular , Munich 2024-06-22 - 2024-09-23
2023
-
Academic lectureKirsch, Anja. (2023) Vernacular utopia: the comparative study of early 19th-century emigrant worldmaking beyond the religious-secular dichotomy. University of Bern Probings into Vernacular Religion , Bern 2023-11-24 - 2023-11-25
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Academic lectureKirsch, Anja. (2023) Surfing conceptual uncertainty: early 19th-century emigration as a springboard of the religious/secular divide. European Association for the Study of Religions 20th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions , Vilnius 2023-04-09 - 2024-08-09
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Academic lectureJohannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja. (2023) Religious and Secular Worldmaking: On Cognitive Historiography. IFR, NTNU AAE Working Group , Trondheim 2023-12-01 - 2023-12-01