Religion & Image

Catalog description

Icons. idols, visions: In many cases, across traditions, images give form to Religious Experience. Questions of visual representation and recognition are central to religious studies. This proseminar will ground students in core texts that theorize visual forms and artifacts in religious life ad related fields of social practice. We will study historical and contemporary contributions from aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and semiotics, alongside other approaches that have shaped the course of inquiry in art history, film studies and anthropology. The syllabus will also highlight visual relations as prescribed and debated within cultic contexts, most notably among Christians and Hindus.