Birgit Meyer | Utrecht University (original) (raw)
Papers by Birgit Meyer
An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new method... more An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new methods and theories for a critical study of religion. Leading beyond the privi- leged medium of the text, this understanding approaches religion as a multi-media phenomenon that mobilizes the full sensorium. The central point of this article is that forms of visual culture are a prime medium of religion, and studying them offers deep insights into the genesis of worlds of lived experience. Pictorial media streamline and sustain religious notions of the visible and the invisible and involve embodied prac- tices of seeing that shape what and how people see. Discussing the implications of the “pictorial turn” for the study of religion, I argue that a more synthesized approach is needed that draws these fields together. The methodological and theoretical implica- tions of this approach are exemplified by turning to my research on video and repre- sentations of the “spiritual” in Southern Ghana.
The politics of religious synthesis, 2000
Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows... more Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows a marked appraisal of bodily sensations, emotions, and experiences as eminently social and politico-aesthetic phenomena (rather than reducing them to a matter of mere individual psychology). How to grasp the genesis of shared perceptions and feelings, and even some kind of ‘wow’ effect, in relation to a posited ‘beyond’ has become a central issue for scholars of religion today. Placed against the horizon of the material turn in the study of religion, R.R. Marett’s approach to religion as an ‘organic complex of thought, emotion, and behaviour’ and his concept of awe gain renewed topicality. Engaging with Marett’s ideas in the context of broader debates about religious experience, in this article (which is based on my 2014 Marett lecture) I call attention to the surplus generated in the interplay of religious things and bodily sensations and explore its role in politics and aesthetics of religious world-making. My central point is that Marett’s work offers valuable resources for an approach to religion that neither takes for granted the existence of a god or transcendental force (as in ontological approaches), nor invests in unmasking it as an illusion (as in critiques of religion as irrational), but instead undertakes a close study of the standardized methods that yield the fabrication of some kind of excess that points to a ‘beyond’ and yet is grounded in the here and now.
Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensa... more Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture and society in turmoil. This book captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination and tracks the interlacing of the medium’s technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects. Stepping into the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other.
Chapter 3 is available via the UCP website, see above
This is a shortened version of my inaugural lecture (2012), plus comments by Hans Belting, Pamela... more This is a shortened version of my inaugural lecture (2012), plus comments by Hans Belting, Pamela Klassen, Monique Scheer and Chris Pinney (and myself)
Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, 2011
An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new method... more An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new methods and theories for a critical study of religion. Leading beyond the privi- leged medium of the text, this understanding approaches religion as a multi-media phenomenon that mobilizes the full sensorium. The central point of this article is that forms of visual culture are a prime medium of religion, and studying them offers deep insights into the genesis of worlds of lived experience. Pictorial media streamline and sustain religious notions of the visible and the invisible and involve embodied prac- tices of seeing that shape what and how people see. Discussing the implications of the “pictorial turn” for the study of religion, I argue that a more synthesized approach is needed that draws these fields together. The methodological and theoretical implica- tions of this approach are exemplified by turning to my research on video and repre- sentations of the “spiritual” in Southern Ghana.
The politics of religious synthesis, 2000
Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows... more Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows a marked appraisal of bodily sensations, emotions, and experiences as eminently social and politico-aesthetic phenomena (rather than reducing them to a matter of mere individual psychology). How to grasp the genesis of shared perceptions and feelings, and even some kind of ‘wow’ effect, in relation to a posited ‘beyond’ has become a central issue for scholars of religion today. Placed against the horizon of the material turn in the study of religion, R.R. Marett’s approach to religion as an ‘organic complex of thought, emotion, and behaviour’ and his concept of awe gain renewed topicality. Engaging with Marett’s ideas in the context of broader debates about religious experience, in this article (which is based on my 2014 Marett lecture) I call attention to the surplus generated in the interplay of religious things and bodily sensations and explore its role in politics and aesthetics of religious world-making. My central point is that Marett’s work offers valuable resources for an approach to religion that neither takes for granted the existence of a god or transcendental force (as in ontological approaches), nor invests in unmasking it as an illusion (as in critiques of religion as irrational), but instead undertakes a close study of the standardized methods that yield the fabrication of some kind of excess that points to a ‘beyond’ and yet is grounded in the here and now.
Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensa... more Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture and society in turmoil. This book captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination and tracks the interlacing of the medium’s technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects. Stepping into the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other.
Chapter 3 is available via the UCP website, see above
This is a shortened version of my inaugural lecture (2012), plus comments by Hans Belting, Pamela... more This is a shortened version of my inaugural lecture (2012), plus comments by Hans Belting, Pamela Klassen, Monique Scheer and Chris Pinney (and myself)
Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, 2011
The full program for Aesthetics and the Analytical Study of Religion, #SORAAAD2016, SORAAAD & Arb... more The full program for Aesthetics and the Analytical Study of Religion, #SORAAAD2016, SORAAAD & Arbeitskreis Religionsästhetik
9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey.
Method and Theory of the Aesthetics of Religion
Alexandra Greiser, “Aesthetics of Religion – What It Is, and What It Is Good For”
Sally Promey, Respondent
Somatic Approaches to the Aesthetics of Religion
Jens Kreinath, “Somatics, Body Knowledge, and the Aesthetics of Religion”
Rebecca Raphael, “Disability, Aesthetics, and Religious Studies Method”
Deborah Green, ““In A Gadda Da Vida” (In the Garden of Eden)”
Sound and the Senses in the Aesthetics of Religion
Annette Wilke, “Sound Matters: the Case of Hindu India and the Sounding of Sacred Texts. An Applied Aesthetics of Religion”
Jason Bivins, “Immersion, Transcription, Assemblage: On Sonic Impermanence and the Study of Religion”
Religious Diversity, Collective Cultural Agency, and the Question of Aesthetics
Birgit Meyer, “Religious Diversity and the Question of Aesthetics”
Josef Sorrett, “The Abiding Powers of AfroProtestantism”
David Morgan - Respondent
Media and Transmission in the Aesthetics of Religion
Jolyon Thomas, “Framing Religious Subjects in an Irreligious Place: Procedural and Ethical Hurdles in Studying the Religion of Japanese Manga and Anime”
David Feltmate, “Should I Laugh Now? The Aesthetics of Humor in Mass Media”
S. Brent Plate - Respondent