Aesthetics and Analysis in Writing on Religion

Aesthetics and Analysis in Writing on Religion
Author: Daniel Gold
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2003-06-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520929519

This book addresses a fundamental dilemma in religious studies. Exploring the tension between humanistic and social scientific approaches to thinking and writing about religion, Daniel Gold develops a line of argument that begins with the aesthetics of academic writing in the field. He shows that successful writers on religion employ characteristic aesthetic strategies in communicating their visions of human truths. Gold examines these strategies with regard to epistemology and to the study of religion as a collective endeavor.

Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics

Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics
Author: S. Brent Plate
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2005-07-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1135879567

Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an "allegorical aesthetics," Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption.

Religious Studies

Religious Studies
Author: Gregory D. Alles
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2010-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 113415271X

Drawing on recent developments in the comparative study of religion, this book explores the trends of the past sixty years from a global perspective. Each of the ten chapters covers the study of religion in a different region of the world, from Europe and the Americas to Asia and the Far East. Topics covered include: local background to the study of religions formation of religious studies in the region important thinkers and writings institutions interregional diversity and interregional connections emerging issues. This book is a major contribution to the field of religious studies and a valuable reference for scholars, researchers and graduate students.

Blackpentecostal Breath

Blackpentecostal Breath
Author: Ashon T. Crawley
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2016-10-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082327456X

In this profoundly innovative book, Ashon T. Crawley engages a wide range of critical paradigms from black studies, queer theory, and sound studies to theology, continental philosophy, and performance studies to theorize the ways in which alternative or “otherwise” modes of existence can serve as disruptions against the marginalization of and violence against minoritarian lifeworlds and possibilities for flourishing. Examining the whooping, shouting, noise-making, and speaking in tongues of Black Pentecostalism—a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national Christian sect with one strand of its modern genesis in 1906 Los Angeles—Blackpentecostal Breath reveals how these aesthetic practices allow for the emergence of alternative modes of social organization. As Crawley deftly reveals, these choreographic, sonic, and visual practices and the sensual experiences they create are not only important for imagining what Crawley identifies as “otherwise worlds of possibility,” they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture in an era when such expressions are increasingly under siege.

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Faith

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Faith
Author: Christopher D. Tirres
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-01-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199352542

What is the future of liberation thought in the Americas? In this groundbreaking work, Christopher D. Tirres takes up this question by looking at the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. He explains how pragmatism lends philosophical clarity and depth to some of liberation theology's core ideas and assumptions. Liberation theology in turn offers pragmatism a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to religious faith, especially its social and pedagogical dimensions. Ultimately, Tirres crafts a philosophical foundation that ensures the continued relevance of liberation thought in today's world. Keeping true to the method of pragmatism, the book begins inductively with a set of actual experiences-- the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas-- and provides a compelling description of the way these performative rituals integrate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith. Subsequent chapters probe this integration deductively at three levels of theoretical analysis: experience/metaphysics, sociality, and pedagogy. As Tirres shows, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith emerge in different yet related ways at all three levels. He argues that utilizing the categories of the aesthetic and ethical enables a richer understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and politics. This book builds new bridges between a number of discourses and key figures, and will be of interest to all who are interested in the liberatory potential of engaged faith praxis, especially when it is expressed in the form of religious ritual.

Stag and Stone

Stag and Stone
Author: Jay Johnston
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (Indonesia)
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021
Genre: Archaeology and religion
ISBN: 9781781793381

Stag and Stone: Religion, Archaeology and Esoteric Aesthetics is a timely and innovative evaluation of the interdisciplinary dialogue between religious studies and archaeology. Investigating the core concepts of materiality, perception, ritual and agency the volume redefines conceptual categories and argues for the need of 'critical bewilderment' as a unique scholarly practice. The pioneering intersubjective methodology brings together recent developments in religious aesthetics, theoretical archaeology and cultural studies. Taking as its focus 'troublesome' objects and places - those deemed ambiguous in purpose and meaning - the individual case studies contribute new knowledge to a range of areas including the archaeology of shamanism, contemporary art and early medieval Norse and Insular material culture. Stag and Stone offers useful insights to upper level undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in the areas of heritage and cultural studies, theoretical archaeology, animal studies, religious studies and art history.

Religion and Aesthetic Experience in Joyce and Yeats

Religion and Aesthetic Experience in Joyce and Yeats
Author: T. Balinisteanu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2015-07-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137434775

This monograph is based on archival research and close readings of James Joyce's and W. B. Yeats's poetics and political aesthetics. Georges Sorel's theory of social myth is used as a starting point for exploring the ways in which the experience of art can be seen as a form of religious experience.

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts
Author: Frank Burch Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2018
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190871199

This volume offers 37 original essays from leading scholars on the crucial topics, issues, methods, and resources for studying and teaching religion and the arts.

American Aesthetics

American Aesthetics
Author: Walter B. Gulick
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438478577

Although there are distinctly American artists--Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example--very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics.