Main topics

Detailed description of the project

Our network, entitled “European Entangled Atheisms: Concepts of Unbelief and the People Shaping them from the 1860s to the 1940s” will combine historical research on European atheism with Secular Studies, relying on both its intellectual and social history. It brings together historians and scholars from related fields such as religious studies and sociology from across Europe in a joint working group, all of whom engage with non-religion and atheism in their research.

The primary aim of our collaboration is to gather, analyse and translate important but so far little-noticed texts on historical atheism. These are texts that shed light on the emerging non-religious discourses and social practices of the late 19th and early 20th centuries within a transnational context. We aim to make these texts accessible to a wider academic audience by producing a digital scholarly edition of source materials, accompanied by scholarly commentary on each text.

The database will be hosted by the Collegium Carolinum in Munich. With this digital source collection on European historical atheisms, we hope to draw attention to intertwined European historical concepts and practices of the non-religious and to link them to the new field of Secular Studies. A concluding international workshop will examine the interconnections between social and intellectual history in the historiography of atheism and build on the work carried out by the network.
 

Some of the topics we will hope to explore more deeply are:

Entanglements in European Atheism

Shift from Freethought to Godlessness

Practices of Atheism

Visuality of Atheism