We invite expressions of interest to participate in a new series of online workshops examining how saints and holy people are represented outside the classic form of the single-text hagiography, what Thomas J. Heffernan calls the ‘sacred biography’. This group aims to bring together scholars interested in saints and sanctity across global history and culture, to explore how they are constructed in other forms poetry, visual art, sermons, letters, monuments, drama, chronicles, liturgy, objects, didactic literature, and others – in an informal, work-in progress format focused on discussion of primary sources from any historical period. We envision each meeting consisting of 1-2 brief presentations, with the text or object and a short description or summary (max 500 words) circulated in advance along with one or two questions for discussion. If you have a historical source or item related to sanctity that you would like to bring to an interdisciplinary forum, please get in touch with Laura Moncion (laura.moncion@philosophie.uni-tuebingen.de) and Alicia Smith (alicia.smith@uib.no) by 15 January 2026 with a brief description, your career stage and institutional affiliation if any.
Guidelines:
The chronological and geographical scope is intentionally open. We are happy to receive proposals that argue for definitions of saint / sanctity outside the mainstream
Speakers are free to contest whether a text is ‘outside hagiography’ or ‘not a classic hagiography — the goal is to study saints and the construction of saint/sanctity beyond canonical textual forms. including troubling our understanding of those forms.
If your source is not in English, you will need to include an English translation.