material culture

Getting Less Precious About Parish Studies

Response
Susan Bigelow Reynolds, in her response to our Season 10 episode with Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, calls attention to how Catholic devotionalism is frequently essentialized and limited in its understanding. She argues instead for a "more expansive consideration" of Catholic ritual ecology.

Depicting the Undepictable: the word, the image, the divine and Islam

Response
"Aniconism and iconoclasm are inherent within" Islam, writes Joseph J. Kaminski in this response to episode 328. Scholars of Islam and Muslims alike should be wary of images and the ways in which they create "an artificial frame" for understanding religious encounters.

Challenging the Normative Stance of Aniconism in the Study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Podcast
In this episode, Candace Mixon discusses aniconism with Birgit Meyer & Terje Stordalen. Would our normative assumptions about the absence of images in certain traditions be better served by turning to aesthetics?

The Gods of Indian Country

Podcast
Dr. Jennifer Graber's new book, "The Gods of Indian Country," grew out of lingering questions from her first book, a study of American Quakers and prisons. Graber learned that Quakers served as missionaries to Native American reservations in the West. She combined this interest in Quaker missions with her research into Native American captivity, so that the resulting narrative contrasts the motives of U.S. officials with Kiowa captives on an Oklahoma reservation.

Religion and Film

Podcast
The interview explores S. Brent Plate's personal research journey into this relatively young field, charting the history of the field in the process. Discussion then turns to the key terms involved... what are we meaning by "religion and film"? The relationship of established "world religions" to cinema? Religion/s on Film? Documentaries?

Visual Culture and the Study of Religion

Podcast
After the keynote, at the EASR, guest interviewer George Ioannides had the opportunity to meet with Professor Meyer to discuss her work, her career, her views on the importance of studying religion and/as material and visual culture, and her advice for students who similarly wish to research topics at the intersection of cultural anthropology and the study of religion.

The Subtle Body

Podcast
During the annual conference of the European Association for the Study of Religion at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Damon Lycourinos had the pleasure of interviewing Jay regarding her work on the subtle body and alternative notions of intersubjectivity, addressing both the theoretical and methodological...
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