Interview with Dr. Ekaterina Novokhatko

Dr. Ekaterina Novokhatko is a Junior Fellow at the Research Center for Comparative History of Religious Orders (FOVOG) at TU Dresden from 01.07.2021 to 31.12.2021. She completed her PHD with a thesis titled „Religion, Imagination and Politics in Post-Carolingian Catalonia (10th – 12th centuries)“ at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in early 2021. In the following short interview, she talks about her research interests, her next ideas and her first impressions of Dresden and the FOVOG.

What are your main research interests?

My PHD was dedicated to the transmission and implementation of new cults of saints and new feasts in the Catalan region between the 10th and 12th centuries. My interests are still connected to Catalonia, but have expanded to the northern Iberian Peninsula and Septimania (nowadays southern France). I tend to focus on how the implementation of cults, feasts and religious ideals shaped the imagination of medieval audiences and how they were expressed in religious texts. The extant sources were mainly promoted by religious elites, who were nevertheless closely connected to secular elites both in political and familial terms. As such, these sources reveal much about their contemporary political and social environment. I seek to understand how the ideas of the elites, consciously and subconsciously generated, were developed and promoted in liturgical and hagiographical sources, and how they thus both reflected and shaped the imagination of contemporaries.

Which project are you working on during your stay at FOVOG?

My project still focuses on Catalan and Septimanian data from the 11th/12th centuries, however, now I work with different sources, medieval inventories, catalogues and book lists, bringing together my research interests from my PhD with the FOVOG Schwerpunkt of religious spiritualities. I aim to reveal, as much as possible, the internal logic behind core collections of religious texts that were in constant use in religious communities. The 11^th century saw the spread of huge religious networks of monks and regular canons in the Catalan and Septimanian regions. This project will attempt to identify particular religious treatises and texts diffused within these religious networks and analyse how they shaped the spirituality of religious congregations.

My stay at FOVOG provides a great opportunity to establish the foundations of this work and develop my methodology. I hope to establish the use of these sources as a suitable basis for future research and to put my hypothesis to the test in identifying peculiar collections of texts. I hope that the results will help me to define specific texts and trace the outlines of specific networks to explore for my continuing research.

What are your first impressions of Dresden/the FOVOG?

I felt very welcome and stimulated at FOVOG from the beginning. I find the methodology and research atmosphere of FOVOG inspiring and am looking forward to engaging as much as possible and applying what I learn to my own research. I am glad that the situation regarding COVID allows for more things right now, like meeting colleagues in person, having fruitful professional discussions during the meetings, using the collections of the SLUB library as well as the FOVOG library which offers a lot for my research.

I have lived in various big cities as well as small university towns, and Dresden is a great combination of a city with various cultural offers, museums and history, and active university life. Yet it is also close to nature and you do not need to go far to find greenery particularly along the Elbe.

What are you most excited about regarding your stay?

I believe that this time will contribute to developing my continuing project more in-depth and learning the FOVOG research methodology will surely enrich my own approach to the history of religious communities and their spirituality in the eleventh century. I also hope to be able to engage more in seminars and workshops during the winter semester, if possible, one of which we are potentially planning in December.

On a personal level I would like to discover more of Dresden and Saxony. Hopefully, it is easy now to travel around and I look forward to the opportunity to explore the region. I would like to visit Leipzig, Meißen, Freiberg for example. Though a medievalist by trade, I am also interested in the 20th century history of Dresden and Saxony and hope to expand my horizons by learning more about the more modern history of the area as well.