Benjamin E. Zeller

Marie W. Dallam

Clothing, dress, and ornamentation are crucial parts of individual and communal religious life and practice, yet they are too often overlooked. This book convenes leading scholars to explore the roles of attire and adornment in the creation and communication of religious meaning, identity, and community. Contributors investigate aspects of religious dress in North America in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, considering adornment practices in a wide range of religious traditions and among individuals who straddle religious boundaries. The collection is organized around four frameworks for understanding the material culture of religion: theological interpretation, identity formation, negotiation of tradition, and activism. Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America features essays on topics such as Black Israelites’ use of African fabrics, Christian religious tattoos, Wiccan ritual nudity, Amish “plain dress,” Mormon sacred garments, Hare Krishna robes, and the Church of Body Modification. Spanning the diversity of religious practice and expression, this book is suitable for a range of undergraduate courses and offers new insights for scholars in many disciplines.

Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America

Reid L. Neilson

Nora L Rubel

The way in which religious people eat reflects not only their understanding of food and religious practice but also their conception of society and their place within it. This anthology considers theological foodways, identity foodways, negotiated foodways, and activist foodways in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Original essays explore the role of food and eating in defining theologies and belief structures, creating personal and collective identities, establishing and challenging boundaries and borders, and helping to negotiate issues of community, religion, race, and nationality. Contributors consider food practices and beliefs among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, as well as members of new religious movements, Afro-Caribbean religions, interfaith families, and individuals who consider food itself a religion. They traverse a range of geographic regions, from the Southern Appalachian Mountains to North America's urban centers, and span historical periods from the colonial era to the present. These essays contain a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, emphasizing the embeddedness of food and eating practices within specific religions and the embeddedness of religion within society and culture. The volume makes an excellent resource for scholars hoping to add greater depth to their research and for instructors seeking a thematically rich, vivid, and relevant tool for the classroom.

Religion, Food, and Eating in North America

This book examines the long history of cowboy Christians in the American West, focusing on the cowboy church movement of the present day and closely related ministries in racetrack and rodeo settings.

Cowboy Christians

with a new introduction by ERIC J. HOBSBAWM "Very usefully pulls the key passages from Gramsci's writings into one volume, which allows English-language readers an overall view of his work. Particularly valuable are the connections it draws across his work and the insights which the introduction and glossary provide into the origin and development of some key Gramscian concepts." --Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology, Open University The most complete one-volume collection of writings by one of the most fascinating thinkers in the history of Marxism, The Antonio Gramsci Reader fills the need for a broad and general introduction to this major figure. Antonio Gramsci was one of the most important theorists of class, culture, and the state since Karl Marx. In the U.S., where his writings were long unavailable, his stature has lately so increased that every serious student of Marxism, political theory, or modern Italian history must now read him. Imprisoned by the Fascists for much of his adult life, Gramsci wrote brilliantly on a broad range of subjects: from folklore to philosophy, popular culture to political strategy. Still the most comprehensive collection of Gramsci's writings available in English, it now features a new introduction by leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, in addition to its biographical introduction, informative introductions to each section, and glossary of key terms.

Marie W. Dallam

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