David Jasper

S. Brent Plate

Imag(in)ing Otherness explores relationships between film and religion, aesthetics and ethics. The volume examines these relationships by viewing how otherness is imaged in film and how otherness alternately might be imagined. Drawing from a variety of films from differing religious perspectives--including Chan Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American religions, Christianity, and Judaism--the essays gathered in this volume examine the particular problems of "living together" when faced with the tensions brought out through the otherness of differing sexualities, ethnicities, genders, religions, cultures, and families.

Filmic Visions of Living Together

Imag(in)ing Otherness

Material religion is a rapidly growing field, and this volume offers an accessible, critical entry into these new areas of research. Each "key term" uses case studies and is accompanied by a color image – an object, practice, space, or site. The entries cut across geographies, histories, and traditions, offering a versatile and engaging text for the classroom. Key topics covered include: - Icon, ritual, magic, gender, race - Sacred, spirit, technology, - Space, belief, body, brain - Taste, touch, smell, sound, vision Each entry demonstrates in clear and jargon-free prose how the key term figures prominently in understanding the materiality of religion. Written by leading international scholars, all entries are linked by the ways materiality stands at the forefront of the understanding of religion, whether that comes from humanistic, social scientific, artistic, curatorial, or other perspectives. Brent Plate brings his expertise and extensive teaching experience to the comprehensive introduction which introduces students to the themes and methods of the material cultural study of religion. Key Terms in Material Religion provides a much-needed resource for courses on theory and method in religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and the ever-increasing number of courses focused on material religion.

Key Terms in Material Religion

Crispin Paine

Gretchen Buggeln

Bringing together scholars and practitioners from North America, Europe, Russia, and Australia, this pioneering volume provides a global survey of how museums address religion and charts a course for future research and interpretation. Contributors from a variety of disciplines and institutions explore the work of museums from many perspectives, including cultural studies, religious studies, and visual and material culture. Most museums throughout the world – whether art, archaeology, anthropology or history museums – include religious objects, and an increasing number are beginning to address religion as a major category of human identity. With rising museum attendance and the increasingly complex role of religion in social and geopolitical realities, this work of stewardship and interpretation is urgent and important. Religion in Museums is divided into six sections: museum buildings, reception, objects, collecting and research, interpretation of objects and exhibitions, and the representation of religion in different types of museums. Topics covered include repatriation, conservation, architectural design, exhibition, heritage, missionary collections, curation, collections and display, and the visitor's experience. Case studies provide comprehensive coverage and range from museums devoted specifically to the diversity of religious traditions, such as the State Museum of the History of Religion in St Petersburg, to exhibitions centered on religion at secular museums, such as Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, at the British Museum.

Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Religion in Museums

Blasphemy provides an accessible cultural history of contentious images within Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the secular nation state, with a focus on the social, political, and psychological forces influencing the art world today and throughout history. With examples ranging from Andres Serrano's salacious Piss Christ, which fuelled debates over public funding of the arts in the US, to Theo Van Gogh's film Submission which led to his murder by an Islamic extremist in Amsterdam, alongside historical pieces, manuscripts, and film stills, this book provides an intriguing vantage point from which to view the interrelations between religion, politics and the visual arts. The recent, rapidly spreading crisis spawned by the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is testament to the power that religious iconoclasm still holds in an increasingly secularised world. Current, hotly debated controversies surrounding freedom of expression and religious tolerance are discussed in detail with an appendix of related articles and commentary. A beautifully illustrated publication, with contributions ranging across artistic media--from painting and sculpture to photography and film. This book is a thoroughly researched and timely consideration of art and its relationship to authority and is essential reading for anyone interested in the debates surrounding the current culture wars, as well as art history in general.

Art that Offends

Blasphemy

Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an "allegorical aesthetics," Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption.

S. Brent Plate

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