Religious Studies Publications
Recent Submissions
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Interplay of Things: Religion, Art, and Presence Together
(2021)In Interplay of Things Anthony B. Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences and the boundaries between people and other things. Rather than considering religion in terms of institutions, doctrines, and creeds, Pinn shows how religion exposes the openness and porousness of all things and how they are always involved ... -
Foucault’s Christianities
(2021)The publication of Michel Foucault’s Les Aveux de la chair (History of Sexuality, Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh) thirty-four years after his death highlights and complicates the relevance of Christian texts—notably from the second through fifth centuries—to Foucault’s forms of critical analysis between 1974 and 1984, as his interests migrate ... -
"Why Can't I Be Both?": Jean-Michel Basquiat and Aesthetics of Black Bodies Reconstituted
(2013)This essay explores the nature and significance of blackness in relationship to an aesthetics of meaning, a method that offers insights into how religion, or the quest for complex subjectivity, is articulated through the visual arts. The essay sketches particular examples of blackness in relationship to aesthetics in a way that involves loose movement ... -
"Why Can't I Be Both?": Jean-Michel Basquiat and Aesthetics of Black Bodies Reconstituted
(2013)This essay explores the nature and significance of blackness in relationship to an aesthetics of meaning, a method that offers insights into how religion, or the quest for complex subjectivity, is articulated through the visual arts. The essay sketches particular examples of blackness in relationship to aesthetics in a way that involves loose movement ... -
Shimmering Magic: Cross-cultural Explorations of the Aesthetic, Moral, and Mystical Significance of Reflecting and Deflecting Shine
(2017)This introduction lays basic theoretical groundwork that helps tie together these different articles on ritual uses of shimmer. Contributors examine not only how contemporary technologies of mass production (tinfoil, plastic sequins) and reproduction (photographs) have entered both iconoclast and iconophile ritual and popular culture spheres; they ... -
Interoception, contemplative practice, and health
(2015)Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with ... -
Better Horrors: From Terror to Communion in Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987)
(2014)Trauma, Trick, and Transcendence in the Life of a Horror Writer: The Case of Whitley Strieber. This essay treats the theorization of horror in Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987). It also pushes us to consider more honestly and forthrightly the question of “real monsters,” that is, the phenomenology of encounters with fantastic presences routinely ... -
Magic
(2013)This section of The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine explores magic. The author discusses: magic in Aug.'s thought; medieval reception-encyclopedic and legal; medieval reception-theological and philosophical; Renaissance magic and the Protestant Reformation; and modern academic and Max Weber. -
Sefirotic Depiction, Divine Noesis, and Aristotelian Kabbalah: Abraham ben Meir de Balmes and Italian Renaissance Thought
(2014)In 1509, the famed Italian Jewish linguist and philosopher Abraham ben Meir de Balmes wrote a patently Averroean commentary on the kabbalistic hypostases known as the sefirot. This commentary is entitled Igeret ha-ʻaśiriyah, or Epistle of the Decad, and it is a prime example of an Aristotelian trend of kabbalistic interpretation within the Italian ... -
For the love and respect of the service: Applied aesthetics and palliative care
(2013)In this article, the author discusses her experiences as an artist in residence in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Emphasis is placed on applied aesthetics in palliative care and their implications for addressing communication, spiritual, and health care issues for ... -
John Rivals Thomas: From Community Conflict to Gospel Narrative
(2001)This article is not the first attempt to discuss the relationship between the Gospels of John and Thomas. There is already a formidable amount of literature on the subject, most of which tries to establish direct literary dependence between the two books or the use of common sources (see DeConick 2001). The present essay, however, will explore the ... -
Mysticism and the Gospel of Thomas
(2008)
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