Visual Culture

It’s a kind of magic – Experiences with the Resisting Object

Response
"The body alone cannot deal with the language problem that we have," writes Alina Kokoschka in her response to our interview with Richard McGregor on images, aesthetics, and challenge of studying objects in Islam.

Following Resistance

Response
How can Islamic Studies help advance the study of religion and visual and material culture, asks Anna Bigelow in this response to our interview with Richard McGregor. One way is through "close attention to the subtleties" of context, method, and discipline that characterize work that intently follows the objects and their "multiple, shifting registers."

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?

What “in the world” is theory?

Response
Despite Meyer's own resistance to being named a theorist, I argue that her sensational mediation is a form of theory making, one which more students of religion should embrace. Birgit Meyer’s interview with George Ioannides in the recently released Religious Studies Project podcast (6/30/2014) is a pedagogical tour de force. In this conversation, ...

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.

Material Religion and Visual Culture: Objects as Visible, Invisible and Virtual

Response
David Morgan, Professor of Religion at Duke University, has written extensively on the subject of material and visual culture. In a recent interview with Christopher Cotter, he provides an overview of the field of material religion and introduces his new book The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (2012). In this review, I briefly tease out some of the themes from the interview, present a few snippets from some of Morgan’s publications and finally,
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