Brent Plate has marshalled an ambitious, and wide-ranging, lexicon of regularly deployed terms (37 in all) which help 'to show us the importance of the material world in the making and practising of religion'.
Art and Christianity
This is a treasure chest, full of unexpected riches. Leading international scholars offer a range of lucid, sparkling and thought-provoking essays ... Read morethat shine new light on Key Terms in Material Religion. Enriched by a wealth of examples, memorable chapters combine to create an engaging, original and imaginative contribution to the study of material religion.
Jolyon Mitchell, Professor of Communications, Arts and Religion, The University of Edinburgh, UK, and author of Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence (2013) Over the past decade or so, material religion has solidified into one of the most productive discursive spaces within the study of religion's. By assembling a stimulating series of vivid entries on obvious and less obvious keywords, this volume displays the many handy affordances of this analytical screen. Especially noteworthy and timely is this anthology`s attention to the senses, which will enrich readers' perception of religion.
Michael Stausberg, Professor, University of Bergen, Norway At our interdisciplinary moment of candidness, creativity, and confusion, nothing is more useful than a methodological lexicon, in other words: keywords. Explained, illustrated, and put to work, these key terms in material religion gel together as a fresh guideline for how-to-do cultural analysis at a time when many are floundering by lack of leading thoughts, yet rightly resistant to old dogmas. The essays are succinct but substantial; the topics relevant; the authors the best around. I wish more fields produced books like this.
Mieke Bal, Founding director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands The study of material religion is at the cutting edge of religious studies. Plate (Hamilton College) sets the lay of the land in the introduction. Usefully he, as he puts it, sets the stage for the field of material religion in the following parameters: bodies meet objects, the senses, time and space, orientation and disorientation of communities and individuals, and strictures and structures of tradition. Some examples of entries are belief, collection, dress, icon, memory, sign, thing, words. Entries are presented through stories and case studies. The book began as a series of discussions with Plate's fellow editors at the journal Material Religion to work out a special issue on key words in the field. The special issue had 19; these are included here in revised form, as are an additional 18. The purpose is to create a working lexicon for the field, not an exhaustive encyclopedia. The international contributors come from diverse academic fields. In addition to religious studies, these include criminology and anthropology. Each entry is about five to six pages long and has a bibliography with ten or so items. Not meant to be a traditional reference book in that its entries are exploratory and not definitive, it will be a valuable adjunct to other material religion texts. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers; professionals/practitioners.
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