Religious traditions have provided a seemingly endless supply of subject matter for film, from the Ten Commandments to the Mahabharata. At the same time, film production has engendered new religious practices and has altered existing ones, from the cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the 2001 Australian census in which 70,000 people indicated their religion to be "Jedi Knight." Representing Religion in World Cinema begins with these mutual transformations as the contributors query the two-way interrelations between film and religion across cinemas of the world. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary by nature, this collection by an international group of scholars draws on work from religious studies, film studies, and anthropology, as well as theoretical impulses in performance, gender, ethnicity, colonialism, and postcolonialism.

Religion, Art, and Visual Culture gathers together the most current scholarship on art, religion, visual culture, and cultural studies. The book approaches the study of world religions through the human, meaning-making activity of seeing. The essays move between specific visual subjects (painting, landscape gardens, calligraphy, architecture, mass media) and the broader theoretical discourses relevant to religion and the wider humanities today. Topics covered include art and perception; the iconicity of Jesus Christ; the relation of word and image in Islam and divine images in India.

Religious traditions have provided a seemingly endless supply of subject matter for film, from the Ten Commandments to the Mahabharata. At the same time, film production has engendered new religious practices and has altered existing ones, from the cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the 2001 Australian census in which 70,000 people indicated their religion to be "Jedi Knight." Representing Religion in World Cinema begins with these mutual transformations as the contributors query the two-way interrelations between film and religion across cinemas of the world. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary by nature, this collection by an international group of scholars draws on work from religious studies, film studies, and anthropology, as well as theoretical impulses in performance, gender, ethnicity, colonialism, and postcolonialism.

Religion, Art, and Visual Culture gathers together the most current scholarship on art, religion, visual culture, and cultural studies. The book approaches the study of world religions through the human, meaning-making activity of seeing. The essays move between specific visual subjects (painting, landscape gardens, calligraphy, architecture, mass media) and the broader theoretical discourses relevant to religion and the wider humanities today. Topics covered include art and perception; the iconicity of Jesus Christ; the relation of word and image in Islam and divine images in India.