Approach -- Aesthetics / Jay Johnston -- Epistemology / Anne Koch -- Aesthetics of knowledge / Arianna Borrelli and Alexandra Grieser -- Methodology / Jens Kreinath -- Analytical categories -- Imagination / Lucia Traut and Anne Wahl -- Ritual / Jesper Sørensen -- Absorption / T. M. Luhrmann -- Aniconicity and aniconism / Mikael Aktor -- Sonality / Annette Wilke -- Museality / Jens Kugele -- Strategies of aesthetic formations -- Sensory strategies / Hubert Mohr -- Narrative strategies / Dirk Johannsen and Anja Kirsch -- Text acts / Katharina Wilkens -- Embodiment through comics / Chris Klassen -- Gendered performativity / Shaireen Rasheed -- Art / Jay Johnston -- Cinesthetics / Adrian Hermann and Yulia Lokshina -- Aestheticscapes -- Cult images / Brigitte Luchesi -- Smell as communication / Esther-Maria Guggenmos -- Sensing and painting knowledge / Isabel Laack -- Protestant (an)aesthetics / Robert Yelle -- Aesthetics of the ugly / Constanze Pabst von Ohain -- Aesthetics of the secular / Stefan Binder -- Aesthetics of the spirits / Peter Bräunlein -- Aesthetics of religion in the classroom -- Teaching aesthetics of religion / Isabel Laack and Petra Tillessen. Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook 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. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move 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 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer
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