Religion and the Senses: Affect, Embodiment, Materiality

Catalog description

Our objective is to (re-)materialize religion by focusing on things and feelings. We approach the religious sensorium as made up not only of sight, scent, sound, taste, and touch, but also emotions,sentiments, and intensities of affect. We consider the bodies formed by religious disciplines and technologies, through contact with thestuff (objects, spaces, and media) of everyday ritual practice and performance. Readings survey contemporary theoretical and social scientific scholarship on religious perception, sensation, and subjectivity. We examine the mind-body problem; the construction of sensory categories; and the influence of sensory hierarchies onformations of race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and class in religious contexts.