Next Steps in Religion and Popular Media

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 July 2015) | Viewed by 19665

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Religious Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 109 Foust Building, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA
Interests: popular culture; Buddhism; Hinduism; digital media; theory and methods for the study of religion

Special Issue Information

Deear Colleagues,

The special issue asks contributors to envision the next steps in the study of religion and popular media. Over the last twenty-five years much work has been done on the subject of religion and popular media. It is time to move this conversation forward by taking a critical examination of new methodological and theoretical concerns. The special issue is not so much interested in case studies, but hopes to give a voice for future visions of the field. The goal is to highlight the range of emerging new methods and theoretical approaches, as well as unique areas of subject matter.

Timeline: 250-word abstract is due by March 1, 2015; if abstract is accepted, a final 6,000-word article will be due by July 1, 2015.

Dr. Gregory Price Grieve
Guest Editor

References:

Chidester, David. Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

Hoover, Stewart, and Knut Lundby, eds. Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997.

Iwamura, Jane Naomi. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Laderman, Gary. Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, The Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States. New York: The New Press, 2009.

Morgan, David. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

Winston, Diane, ed. Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Popular Culture
  • media
  • theories and methods for the study of religion

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

220 KiB  
Article
Ethnography of Religious Instants: Multi-Sited Ethnography and the Idea of “Third Spaces”
by Julian M. Murchison and Curtis D. Coats
Religions 2015, 6(3), 988-1005; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel6030988 - 25 Aug 2015
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 11250
Abstract
Attempts to understand contemporary religious practice, and its associated communities and identities, must take into consideration the way that these phenomena exist in both virtual and physical spaces, as well as the way that, in some instances, religion bridges or erases this dichotomy. [...] Read more.
Attempts to understand contemporary religious practice, and its associated communities and identities, must take into consideration the way that these phenomena exist in both virtual and physical spaces, as well as the way that, in some instances, religion bridges or erases this dichotomy. The approach here focuses on those forms of religious practice that do not fit easily into one or the other type of space. Starting with existing discussions of ethnographic methodologies for studying religious practice and the growing literature on how to study “digital religion”, we examine the methodological needs for studying “third spaces”, the hybrid, in-between spaces of religious practice. The model presented here is one of simultaneous and collaborative ethnography that extends shared methods across the virtual and the actual dimensions as the most productive approach to this type of research. Using tailored research methods and techniques within this approach offers the opportunity to consider ways in which behaviors, interactions, and speech acts that happen within this event are continuous or discontinuous with each other. It also offers insight into the dynamics of “shared experience” and how perspectives are or are not shared within these multiple dimensions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Steps in Religion and Popular Media)
190 KiB  
Article
Contemplative Media Studies
by Kevin Healey
Religions 2015, 6(3), 948-968; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel6030948 - 5 Aug 2015
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 8026
Abstract
The psychological and socio-economic implications of digital technologies call for scholarship that engages questions about the nature of human consciousness, the construction of the self and the ethics of technical development. In this article, I outline a framework for an approach called contemplative [...] Read more.
The psychological and socio-economic implications of digital technologies call for scholarship that engages questions about the nature of human consciousness, the construction of the self and the ethics of technical development. In this article, I outline a framework for an approach called contemplative media studies. This approach incorporates several different scholarly threads, namely: via critical political-economic media scholarship, a focus on achieving social and economic justice through policy initiatives and structural reform; via media and religious scholarship, an interest in the religious dimensions of digital culture and the role of media in shaping religious identity; and via contemplative studies, an appreciation of the applicability of contemplative principles to research methods and theory. This framework allows us to examine the spiritual ideology that drives the construction of commercial digital platforms and to ask whether alternative platforms might better catalyze human development. Anchored in a critical commitment to socio-economic justice, contemplative media studies is aimed at articulating an ethically-responsive and economically-sustainable architecture of human flourishing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Steps in Religion and Popular Media)
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