Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross-Cultural Reader

Book Overview

Religion, Art, and Visual Culture is a cross-cultural exploration of the study of visuality and the arts from a religious perspective. This forward looking and accessible collection gathers together the most current scholarship for those interested in art, religion, visual culture, and cultural studies. Inherently interdisciplinary, this reader approaches the study of world religions through the human, meaning-making activity of seeing. The volume oscillates between specific visual subjects (painting, landscape gardens, calligraphy, architecture, mass media) and the broader theoretical discourses which are relevant to Humanities students today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312240295
• ISBN13: 9780312240295
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A reader in Ohio

This is an amazing book. It opens up all kinds of interesting questions about the importance of seeing and vision in a range of different religious contexts. In each major section, Plate invites us to approach a religious tradition not through its main scriptures but through a visual medium. Islam, for example, is approached via calligraphy as a way of thinking about the written word as image. Buddhism is approached through zen gardens as a way of thinking about the concept of shinjin (mind-body). I used this book as the primary textbook for a college course called "Religion and Visual Culture." It was a huge success. It is filled with interesting ideas and fresh approaches, and it is great reading. I highly recommend it.