The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion

Anne Koch, Katharina Wilkens

Bloomsbury Academic

2019

400 páginas

13h 20m

ISBN-13: 9781350066717

Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this book explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. The book brings together research taking place in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity and post-colonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space, moving beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past twenty years. Case studies are drawn from around the world and the book includes contributions from scholars based in Europe, USA and Australia. Sally Promey (Yale Divinity School) provides the foreword. The book is illustrated with 35 images which can be seen in full color on the book's web-page at www.bloomsbury.com.