The workshop Text and Materiality, held on June 2 and 3, 2025, at Utrecht University, brought together an international group of scholars to explore the dynamic interplay between text and material form across religious traditions and cultural contexts. Over two days of rich and interdisciplinary exchange, participants examined how texts are not only linguistic artifacts but also material objects that shape and are shaped by the environments in which they circulate.
Discussions ranged from theoretical reflections to detailed case studies, highlighting how religious texts—whether inscribed in books, painted on murals, carved into monuments, or housed in libraries—mediate meaning through their physical presence. Drawing on Karin Barber’s (2007) notion of text as a “tissue of words,” the workshop emphasized how texts materialize through verbal, visual, tactile, and spatial forms, influencing how they are produced, transmitted, and experienced.
Participants explored how religious texts function as media that render the sacred tangible, communicate religious ideas, and structure ritual practice. The materiality of these texts—whether in the form of a Torah scroll, a hymnbook, a digital prayer app, or a monumental inscription—shapes sensory engagement and interpretive processes. As Cummings (2020) notes, the “physiology and experience” of encountering a text is deeply tied to its material form.
The workshop adopted a broad definition of religious texts, extending beyond canonical scriptures to include contemporary worship songs, devotional literature, and even ephemeral or performative texts. Embodied engagement—through reading, chanting, performing, or even consuming texts—was a recurring theme, underscoring the active role of practitioners in making meaning through material interaction.
By situating texts within their broader material and spatial contexts—including libraries, sacred architecture, public monuments, and visual culture—the workshop offered new insights into the ways religious meaning is constructed and communicated. The event marked a timely intervention in ongoing debates about the materiality of texts and the material dimensions of religion more broadly.
Presenters and contributions
- Renske Hoff, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Middle Dutch Literature
Building Your Bible: The Transformative Actions of Dutch Bible Users in the Premodern Period - James W. Watts, Syracuse University, Department of Religion
New Public Libraries as Textual Monuments that Materialize Civic Values - Katja Rakow, Utrecht University, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Religious Studies
Textual Media, Materialities, and Textual Practices - Esther Voswinkel, Orient-Institut Istanbul, Turkey
Touching Transcendence: revisiting “religion” through text and textile - Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Utrecht University, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Islam and Arabic
Hafez in the Mesdag Collection: Poetry and Images on Two Persian Lampstands - Marianne Schleicher, Aarhus University, Department of the Study of Religion
The Concept of ‘Sacred Texture’: On Sensing Absent Sacred Texts - Reïnda Hullij, Utrecht University, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Musicology
Kapata scripts; cornerstones for Maluku-Dutch identities? - Jip Lensink, Utrecht University, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Religious Studies
The Materiality of Language: Moluccan Belonging among the Protestant Diaspora - Maarten Holtzapffel, Utrecht University, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Islam and Arabic
Murgh-i Bagh-i Malakutam (“I Am the Bird of the Heaven’s Kingdom”): Mystical Poetry on the Walls of Tehran - Gökçen B. Dinç, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University
Living and Feeling Islam in Turkish: Mevlidhans and the Materiality of Mevlid and Karbala Texts in Turkey (1930-1980) - Arash Ghajarjazi, Utrecht University, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Islam and Arabic
Matter and Memory at Omar Khayyam’s Mausoleum in Nishapur - Hanna Nieber, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
Healing through text: drinking the written Qur’an
Workshop conveners: Katja Rakow, Birgit Meyer and Jip Lensink with support from student assistant Martha Gabriela Sanchez Martinez