Art

The Essential and Complex Relationship of Religion and Media

Response
The use of new digital media may sometimes be clumsy, not well understood, and subject to failure at times, writes Robin Harragin Hussey, but it is the current and future manifestation of the way many religions and religious people want to share and make themselves known.

The Inauthenticity of New Media

Response
When it comes to media and the study of religion, Travis Cooper says "scholars need to ask more compelling questions, moving beyond overly simplistic binaries and dualisms to think in terms of scales and networks, degrees and systems, connection and difference."

Media and the Study of Religion

Podcast
Vivian Asimos, Chris Cotter, Time Hutchings and Suzanne Owen discuss the intersections of Media and the Study of Religion.

When the Word is a Sound: Toward a Sensory Scholarship of Religion

Response
Music forcefully reminds us of religion’s timebound nature and holds its own systems of rhythm and inflection—you cannot skim music the way you can cram a text.

Religion and Literature

Podcast
How can studying literature help us to study religion? And what the question even mean? In this interview, Alana Vincent, Lecturer in Jewish Studies at the University of Chester, sets out some of the interesting intersections of these two fields.

Superhero Shamans and Magickal Scribes: Appraising the study of Religion and Comics

Response
"Wright (2007), for example, has suggested that, “the modern superhero is a contemporary manifestation of the ancient shamanic role” (2007:127). While Pedler has argued that, “Morrison’s mission [...is] to make our reality as interesting as theirs, as surreal, full of every potential and possibility” (Pedler, 2009:264), making them, in effect, shamanic fictions."

Religion and Cultural Production

Podcast
"It is a truth generally acknowledged that religions have been the earliest and perhaps the chief progenitors of cultural products in human societies..." Clearly there is no shortage of data for scholars wishing to delve into this broad topic. But what do we actually mean by ‘cultural product’? How can we claim that ‘religion’ is producing these things in any meaningful way?
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