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.

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.

Edited by leading experts in the field, The Film and Religion Reader brings together the key writings in this exciting and dynamic discipline. In over sixty interviews, essays and reviews from numerous directors, film critics and scholars, this eagerly anticipated anthology offers the most complete survey of this emerging field to date.

Film is now widely studied and researched in theology and religious studies departments, The Film and Religion Reader is therefore ideal for students and researchers, introduced and organized into the following thematic and chronological sections, each with an introduction by the editors:

• the dawn of cinema: adherents and detractors
• the birth of film theory: realism, formalism, and religious vision
• directors and critics: global perspectives - African and Middle-Eastern perspectives; Asian and Australisian perspectives; European perspectives; South and North American perspectives
• theological and Biblical approaches to analysing film
• recent reflections on the relation between religion and film.

This Reader brings together a huge amount of material in a student-friendly format and will be an invaluable resource for courses within both theology and religious studies.

Edited by leading experts in the field, The Film and Religion Reader brings together the key writings in this exciting and dynamic discipline. In over sixty interviews, essays and reviews from numerous directors, film critics and scholars, this eagerly anticipated anthology offers the most complete survey of this emerging field to date.

Film is now widely studied and researched in theology and religious studies departments, The Film and Religion Reader is therefore ideal for students and researchers, introduced and organized into the following thematic and chronological sections, each with an introduction by the editors:

• the dawn of cinema: adherents and detractors
• the birth of film theory: realism, formalism, and religious vision
• directors and critics: global perspectives - African and Middle-Eastern perspectives; Asian and Australisian perspectives; European perspectives; South and North American perspectives
• theological and Biblical approaches to analysing film
• recent reflections on the relation between religion and film.

This Reader brings together a huge amount of material in a student-friendly format and will be an invaluable resource for courses within both theology and religious studies.

Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics is an innovative attempt to reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Brent Plate deftly sifts through Benjamin's voluminous writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditional religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption. Recasting religion as religious practice, as process and movement, Plate locates a Benjaminian materialist aesthetics, what the author calls an "allegorical aesthetics," in order to uncover sources and establish a new locus for the study of religion. Placing the concept of an allegorical aesthetics into practice, Plate offers examinations of aesthetic productions such as Daniel Libeskind's architecture and Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades alongside religious developments such as the Hindu Bhakti movement and Jewish Kabbalistic thought. Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics will be necessary reading for those interested in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and material culture.

"Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics" is an innovative attempt to reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Brent Plate deftly sifts through Benjamin's voluminous writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditional religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption. Recasting religion as religious practice, as process and movement, Plate locates a Benjaminian materialist aesthetics, what the author calls an "allegorical aesthetics," in order to uncover sources and establish a new locus for the study of religion.
Placing the concept of an allegorical aesthetics into practice, Plate offers examinations of aesthetic productions such as Daniel Libeskind's architecture and Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades alongside religious developments such as the Hindu Bhakti movement and Jewish Kabbalistic thought.
"Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics" will be necessary reading for those interested in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and material culture.

The four volumes of 'Film and Religion' will present a range of scholarly articles, mainly since 1990, which offer a critical overview of the interdisciplinary field from a number of perspectives. It is an international collection that includes attention to popular Hollywood and 'arthouse' films and filmmakers, as well as documentaries, Bollywood, Nollywood, and other international pockets of film production and reception. Readings are primarily from scholars of religious studies, theology, and biblical studies, but the collection will also include work by film studies scholars and filmmakers themselves. The selections will indicate how cinema reflects religious and theological interests of filmmakers and the cultures within which they operate. Moreover, it will show how films impact those same cultures, including religious beliefs and practices. The relationship is not one-way, but entails multiple directions of influence.

Religion and cinema share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space. Through cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, and other production activities, film takes the world "out there" and refashions it. Religion achieves similar ends by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, telling stories, and gathering people together for communal actions and concentrated focus. The result of both cinema and religious practice is a re-created world: a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we long to live in, or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. Explorations of film show how the cinematic experience relies on similar aesthetic devices on which religious rituals have long relied: sight, sound, the taste of food, the body, and communal experience. Meanwhile, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic nature of religious rituals can alter our understanding of film production. Utilizing terminology and theoretical insights from the study of religion as well as the study of film, Religion and Film shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed new light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed and vice versa. This thoroughly revised and expanded new edition is designed to appeal to the needs of courses in religion as well as film departments. In addition to two new chapters, this edition has been restructured into three distinct sections that offer students and instructors theories and methods for thinking about cinema in ways that more fully connect film studies with religious studies.

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.

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.

Religion and cinema share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space. Through cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, and other production activities, film takes the world "out there" and refashions it. Religion achieves similar ends by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, telling stories, and gathering people together for communal actions and concentrated focus. The result of both cinema and religious practice is a re-created world: a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we long to live in, or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. Explorations of film show how the cinematic experience relies on similar aesthetic devices on which religious rituals have long relied: sight, sound, the taste of food, the body, and communal experience. Meanwhile, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic nature of religious rituals can alter our understanding of film production. Utilizing terminology and theoretical insights from the study of religion as well as the study of film, Religion and Film shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed new light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed and vice versa. This thoroughly revised and expanded new edition is designed to appeal to the needs of courses in religion as well as film departments. In addition to two new chapters, this edition has been restructured into three distinct sections that offer students and instructors theories and methods for thinking about cinema in ways that more fully connect film studies with religious studies.

Record-setting ticket sales, heated controversy, sold-out viewings for church groups, and feuding critics. The Passion of the Christ is still going strong. Re-Viewing the Passion is the first collection that takes Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ as a focal point. Just in time for the DVD release, Re-Viewing the Passion will help all of us make sense of this blockbuster movie by offering a variety of perspectives on its significance. Thirteen contributors in diverse fields - biblical studies, Jewish studies, media studies, art history, and Christian theology - and from differing religious orientations - Jewish, Protestant, Catholic - contribute short and reader-friendly essays that explore the theological ideas, iconography, audience reception and historical and biblical accuracy of the film.

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.