Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality provides a thoughtfully organized, inclusive, and vibrant project of the multiple ways in which religion and materiality intersect. The contributions explore the way that religion is shaped by, and has shaped, the material world, embedding beliefs, doctrines, and texts into social and cultural contexts of production, circulation, and consumption.
The Companion not only contains scholarly essays but has an accompanying website to demonstrate the work of performers, architects, and expressive artists, ranging from musicians and dancers to religious practitioners. These examples offer specific illustrations of the interplay of religion and materiality in everyday life. The project is organized from a comparative perspective, highlighting examples and case studies from traditions originating in both East and West. To summarize, the volume:
- Brings together the leading figures, theories and ideas in the field in a systematic and comprehensive way
- Offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing together religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, geography, the cognitive sciences, ecology, and media studies
- Takes a comparative perspective, covering all the major faith traditions
Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her publications include The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994), The Life of Hinduism (co-edited with John Stratton Hawley, 2007), and Hinduism (2009). Her research has been supported by the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment for the Humanities; the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation; the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian; and the Social Science Research Council.