Download or read book Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism Christianity and Islam written by Birgit Meyer and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Oslo and Utrecht University. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are known to privilege words over images. This book shows, however, that the reality is more complex. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen explores the complex procedures used to render the invisible as visible and the elusive as tangible in these three traditions. Working from different disciplinary angles, contributors reflect on figuration and sensation in biblical culture, medieval Jewish culture, the imagination of the unseen in Islamic settings, Christian assaults on 'idolatry' in Africa, baroque and modern Church art, contemporary Eastern Orthodox tradition, photography on the East African coast, European opera and literature, and more. The book shows that the three religious traditions have formed sensorial regimes: embodied habits, traditions and standards for seeing, sensing, displaying, and figuring that which could not, or should not, be seen. So, the desire for seeing the invisible and experiencing the beyond are paradoxically confirmed, contested and controlled, by the sensorial regimes in vogue. This carries over even into secularized use of religious figurations in arts and literature. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen is important reading for scholars of anthropology, religious studies, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Islamic studies, art history, cultural studies, biblical studies and archaeology."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Download or read book Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism Christianity and Islam written by Birgit Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Oslo and Utrecht University. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are known to privilege words over images. This book shows, however, that the reality is more complex. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen explores the complex procedures used to render the invisible as visible and the elusive as tangible in these three traditions. Working from different disciplinary angles, contributors reflect on figuration and sensation in biblical culture, medieval Jewish culture, the imagination of the unseen in Islamic settings, Christian assaults on 'idolatry' in Africa, baroque and modern Church art, contemporary Eastern Orthodox tradition, photography on the East African coast, European opera and literature, and more. The book shows that the three religious traditions have formed sensorial regimes: embodied habits, traditions and standards for seeing, sensing, displaying, and figuring that which could not, or should not, be seen. So, the desire for seeing the invisible and experiencing the beyond are paradoxically confirmed, contested and controlled, by the sensorial regimes in vogue. This carries over even into secularized use of religious figurations in arts and literature. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen is important reading for scholars of anthropology, religious studies, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Islamic studies, art history, cultural studies, biblical studies and archaeology.
Download or read book The Future of Religious Heritage written by Ferdinand de Jong and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Religious Heritage examines the resurgence of religious heritage in a secular age and frames such heritage as both legacy from the past and promise for the future. Drawing on case studies from across Europe, this volume addresses the intersection of three well-defined areas of research: secularism, religious heritage and the question of renewal. Considering the heritagisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage, contributions to the book consider to what extent the idea of renewal, so pivotal to religious and secular ontologies, is present in heritage formations. Thinking about the temporalities of re-enactment and reconstruction, this volume examines whether heritage practices incorporate religious time into secular practice. Problematising such temporalities of the sacred in our post-secular age, the volume explores how these intersections of religious and secular time in heritage practices inform constructions of the future. The Future of Religious Heritage addresses the paradox of the secularisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage in a post-secular age. It will appeal to academics and students with an interest in critical heritage studies, religion, and (post)secularism, and will also be of interest to those studying re-enactment, regeneration and renewal.
Download or read book Devotional Visualities written by Karen Pechilis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Download or read book Image Controversies written by Birgit Mersmann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many contemporary societies we encounter iconoclasm breaking out with renewed violence. Iconoclastic actions against objects of visual material culture and testimonials of history act as dynamite in the public sphere. They are expressions of political, religious, national, and identity conflicts. Even the freedom of art is threatened by censorship and cancel culture. Based on case studies from different world regions, contemporary iconoclasms in art, media, and cultural heritage are critically analyzed from both a global and an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three sections, the book discusses attacks on monuments and memorials, idol disputes in museums and the visual arts, and forms of mediated iconoclasm in contemporary art.
Download or read book Religion in Reason written by Tarek R. Dika and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents critical engagements with the work of Hent de Vries, widely regarded as one of the most important living philosophers of religion. Contributions by a distinguished group of scholars discuss the role played by religion in philosophy; the emergence and possibilities of the category of religion; and the relation between religion and violence, secularism, and sovereignty. Together, they provide a synoptic view of how de Vries’s work has prompted a reconceptualization of how religion should be studied, especially in relation to theology, politics, and new media. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of religious studies, theology, and philosophy.
Download or read book Sensational Piety written by Murtala Ibrahim and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in anthropological comparison and the concept of materiality, this book offers an in-depth ethnographic study of the similarities and differences among various forms of religious practices in a Pentecostal Church (Christ Embassy) and an Islamic group (NASFAT) in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Scholarship in this area tends to focus on inter-religious contestations and conflicts; however, this book proposes that another dynamic is unfolding between Christians and Muslims that is characterised by conviviality, interfaith joint action programmes, mutual influences and even the exchange of religious forms. The comparative approach reveals that, notwithstanding the seemingly opposed worldviews and divergences between Muslims and Christians, they all face similar challenges and apply similar techniques for meeting the challenges posed by the precarious Nigerian urban environment. It is through practices – especially those conducted in (semi-) public settings – that people from different religious persuasions define, encroach on and feel the weight of each other's presence.
Download or read book Blasphemy A Very Short Introduction written by Yvonne Sherwood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where not everyone believes in God, 'blasphemy' is surely a concept that has passed its use-by-date. And yet blasphemy (like God and religion) seems to be on the rise. In this Very Short Introduction Yvonne Sherwood asks why this should be the case, looking at factors such as the increased visibility of religious and racial minorities, new media, and engines of surveillance (which are far more omniscient than the old gods could ever be), and the legacies of colonial blasphemy laws. Throughout, Sherwood uncovers new histories, from the story of accidentally blasphemous cartoons, to the close associations between blasphemy, sex, and birth control. She also argues that blasphemy itself involves an inherent contradiction in imagining the divine as an entity that must be revered above all, yet also a being that could possibly be hurt by anything that happens in the merely human sphere. Unpicking some of the most famous cases of blasphemy, Sherwood also looks at obscure instances, asking why some 'blasphemies' have become infamous, while others have disappeared. Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion written by Pooyan Tamimi Arab and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice. Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions. The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts: Genealogies of Material Religion Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination. From Spinoza’s political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants’ attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India’s Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition. The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.
Download or read book Islam through Objects written by Anna Bigelow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islam through Objects represents the state of the field of Islamic material cultural studies. With contributions from scholars of religion, anthropologists, art historians, folklorists, historians, and other disciplines, Anna Bigelow brings together a wide range of perspectives on Islamic materiality to debunk myths of Islamic aversion to material aspects of religion. Each chapter focuses on a single object in daily use by Muslims-prayer beads, coins, amulets, a cistern well, clothing, jewellery, bodily and domestic adornments-to consider both generic and particular aspects of the object in question. These narratives will engage the reader by describing and analyzing each object in terms of its provenance, materials, uses, and history, as well as the broader history, variety and uses of the object in Islamic history and cultures. Temporal, regional, and sectarian variations in the styles, uses, and theological perspectives are also considered. Framed by an introduction that assesses the various approaches to Islamic material culture in recent scholarship, Islam through Objects provides a template for the study of religion and material culture, which engages current theory, subtle and nuanced narratives, and the creative and imaginal capacities of Muslims through history.
Download or read book Spiritual Sensations written by Sarah K. Balstrup and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secular, pluralist culture of the West encourages a subjective approach to spiritual truth where stimulating emotional experiences, such as those provided by film, can contribute to personal conceptions of the sacred. Examining Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as the principal case-study and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2009) and Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) as comparative examples, Sarah Balstrup argues that these directors harness the affective properties of film to generate altered states of perception in a manner analogous to religious practice. Powerful feelings of dissociation and indescribable significance typical of mystical testimony appear in viewer responses to these films, demonstrating the continued sacralisation of such states of mind. In their own way, each film confronts the viewer with an apocalyptic revelation of the impersonal forces of the universe, moving away from personhood and the human narrative, into pure sensation. They present a non-deterministic spiritual truth that can be intuited but not explained, mirroring developments in the religious sphere. Investigating the relationship between cinematic technique and religious experience, Spiritual Sensations offers an alternative approach to the study of religion and film that has been principally focused on narrative symbolism and the dramatisation of values. Spiritual Sensations makes a further contribution to the field by analysing films contextually, considering viewers' subjective responses in light of religious and cultural change.
Download or read book Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion written by Dirk Johannsen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe. Contributors are: Stefan Binder, Arianna Borrelli, Markus Altena Davidsen, Laura Feldt, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Dirk Johannsen, Jens Kreinath, Isabel Laack, Martin Lehnert, Brigitte Luchesi, Bastiaan van Rijn, Caroline Widmer, Annette Wilke, Katharina Wilkens.
Download or read book Public Theology and the Importance of Visual Culture written by Toine van den Hoogen and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asserts the importance of conducting research on visual culture phenomena in public theology. As we increasingly communicate and express our social and cultural identities through images in today’s culture and economy, visual culture has become a burgeoning area of study and research in many academic institutions. In light of this, public theology must engage with this complex field. The concept of iconicity is raising fresh inquiries within the realm of public theology, which is already rife with hermeneutic concerns. These questions must be revisited, as images compel us to reassess our ongoing approach to the interpretation of religion. The potency of images is an uncharted and potent force, propelling public theology towards a future that is yet to be discovered.
Download or read book Materializing the Bible written by James S. Bielo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anthropologist James Bielo explores a diverse range of practices and places that “materialize the Bible,” including gardens, theme parks, shrines, museums, memorials, exhibitions, theatrical productions, and other forms of replication. Integrating ethnographic, archival, and mass media data, case studies focus primarily on U.S. Christianity from the late 19th-century to the present. Composed as 20 short chapters that may be read in any order, the book is divided into three sections. Section I, “Variations on Replication,” analyzes examples that recontextualize elements from the (actual or imagined) biblical past. Section II, “The Power of Nature,” turns to the natural world associated with Christian scripture and how it is mobilized as a privileged media. Section III, “Choreographing Experience,” examines lived interactions with the affordances of materializing the Bible. Bielo argues that materializing the Bible works as an authorizing practice to intensify intimacies with scripture and circulate potent ideologies. Performed through the sensory experience of bodies, physical technologies, and infrastructures of place, Bielo illustrates how this phenomenon is always, ultimately, about expressions of power.
Download or read book The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion written by Robert A. Segal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-02-26 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore a rigorous but accessible guide to contemporary approaches to the study of religion from leading voices in the field The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion delivers an expert and insightful analysis of modern perspectives on the study of religion across the humanities and the social sciences. Presupposing no knowledge of the approaches examined in the collection, the book is ideal for undergraduate students who have yet to undertake extensive study in the humanities or social sciences. The book includes perspectives from those in fields as diverse as globalization, cognitive science, the study of emotion, law, esotericism, sex and gender, functionalism, terror, the comparative method, modernism, and postmodernism. Many of the topics covered in the book clearly hail from religious studies, while others are grounded in other areas of academia. All of the chapters contained within are written by recognized authors who show how their chosen discipline contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon of religion. This book also includes topics like: A comprehensive exploration of multiple approaches to religious study, including anthropology, economics, literature, phenomenology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology A review of various topics germane to the study of religion, including the study of the body, cognitive science, the comparative method, death and the afterlife, law, magic, music, and myth A selection of subjects touching on modern trends in extremism and violence, including chapters on terror and violence, fundamentalism, and nationalism A discussion of the influence of modernism and postmodernism in religion Ideal for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in humanities and social science programs taking courses on religion and myth, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion will also earn a place in the libraries of specialists working in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, History, and Philosophy.
Download or read book What is Islamic Art written by Wendy M. K. Shaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An alternate approach to Islamic art emphasizing literary over historical contexts and reception over production in visual arts and music.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies written by Pamela J. Stewart and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual Studies have achieved prominence since the 1980s, when interest in ritual as an object of inquiry was established, bridging over a number of humanities and social science disciplines. Both connected with religious studies and independent of it; overlapping with social and cultural anthropology, but also with history; related to science and health practices and ranging across the life course to education, Ritual Studies has come to encompass studies of change and dynamism in social life. Rituals are determinate in form, but not static. They enunciate distinctive social values within specific contexts that frame them; and they relate to the wider concerns and issues of their practitioners. Due to this broad and wide-ranging scope, it is often difficult to find a single resource on Ritual Studies, and even more so to find one which moves beyond the beginnings of anthropological theorizing to grapple with the present-day contexts of ritual. Bringing together recent ethnographies of ritual practice and ritualization from across the globe, this Handbook provides case study of ritual in the light of Emotion and Cognition, Identity, Religious Power, Performance and Literature, Ecology and Ecological Disaster, Media, and other topics. While each chapter provides a deep ethnography of a specific society, ritual, or ritualized practice, each also engages with current theoretical and substantive approaches to the relevant topic. The scholars collected here provide original synoptic and indicative pieces as guideposts and pathways through the complex, varied and cross-disciplinary, and vast landscape of scholarship that constitutes Ritual Studies today and points to developments in the future.
