Synopses & Reviews
"The work presented in this book is very important. It offers a useful bridge between art history and religious studies, opening up the insights of each to the other. By offering a workable set of analytical categories to be used in studying religious images, Morgan's excellent scholarship promises to advance the current move toward more sophisticated understandings of religious material culture by leaps and bounds."and#151;Jeanne Halgren Kilde, author of
When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America"The Sacred Gaze is a seminal bookand#151;it goes further than anything else I know of in placing religious aspects of the field on a firm foundation of scholarship. Morgan has almost single-handedly defined the subfield of religious visual culture studies, and the present volume moves the conversation to an impressive new level."and#151;Jay D. Green, Professor of History, Covenant College
"The Sacred Gaze is of fundamental importance for the relations between images and religious belief, and is a major contribution to the burgeoning field of visual studies. Morgan's wide-ranging book moves from the contested status of images between cultures, to the history of current American attitudes towards them. A notable achievement."and#151;David Freedberg, author of The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response
"This book is a tonic. It's just what visual studies needs: a sensible, ecumenical, interdisciplinary, multicultural consideration of the place of visuality in religion, and the place of religion in all images. It should help start conversations that can go back and forth between the secularized debates of the university and the religionist discourse that still predominates outside it."and#151;James Elkins, author of The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art
"David Morgan makes a compelling case for the importance of visual evidence in the study of religion, and he offers useful suggestions about how to interpret that evidence. I don't know of a better introduction to religion and visual culture."and#151;Thomas A. Tweed, author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion
Review
and#8220;This rewarding book will provoke thought and re-vision. . . . Highly recommended.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Excellent analysis of the social dynamics of the visual field.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Morganand#8217;s clever and penetrating academic analysis of case studies provides his text with profundity and interest.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A first-rate work of scholarship. . . . Anyone piqued by these subjects will find David Morganand#8217;s pioneering vision deeply satisfying.and#8221;
Synopsis
Alef is for Allah is the first groundbreaking study of the emotional space occupied by children in modern Islamic societies. Focusing primarily on visual representations of children from modern Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, the book examines these materials to investigate concepts such as innocence, cuteness, gender, virtue, and devotion, as well as community, nationhood, violence, and sacrifice. In addition to exploring a subject that has never been studied comparatively before, Alef is for Allah extends the boundaries of scholarship on emotion, religion, and visual culture and provides unique insight into Islam as it is lived and experienced in the modern world.
Synopsis
David Morgan builds on his previous groundbreaking work to offer this new, systematically integrated theory of the study of religion as visual culture. Providing key tools for scholars across disciplines studying the materiality of religions, Morgan gives an accessibly written theoretical overview including case studies of the ways seeing is related to touching, hearing, feeling, and such ephemeral experiences as dreams, imagination, and visions. The case studies explore both the high and low of religious visual culture: Catholic traditions of the erotic Sacred Heart of Jesus, the unrecognizability of the Virgin in the Fatima apparitions, the prehistory of Warner Sallmanand#8217;s face of Jesus, and more. Basing the study of religious images and visual practices in the relationship between seeing and the senses, Morgan argues against reductionist models of and#147;the gaze,and#8221; demonstrating that vision is not something that occurs in abstraction, but is a fundamental way of embodying the human self.
Synopsis
"Exploring a dazzling variety of religious imagery, David Morgan shows how vision functions as an active, physical process, embedded in bodily experience and profoundly shaped by social practice. Morgan's bold, thoughtful interpretations will fascinate art historians and students of visual culture as well as historians of religion.and#8221; -Pepe Karmel, Department of Art History, New York University
"The Embodied Eye is an important and truly groundbreaking book. It represents a substantive and quite fascinating extension of David Morgan's previous work- especially as it impressively shows us how 'seeing' is the primary medium of social life, and materially integrates the body of the individual and the body of the group. Morgan is unquestionably the pioneering theorist in the whole emergent field of Visual and Culture Studies as it relates to religion and art." -Norman Girardot, University Distinguished Professor, Lehigh University
and#147;Under David Morganand#8217;s inspiring guidance, readers are taken on a dazzling journey through religious images that mediate worlds of faith. Embedding vision in the body, this book stands out with its thought-provoking approach to religious media as material and embodied interfaces that underpin the social construction of the sacred.and#8221; -Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University
Synopsis
"Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its objectand#151;an image, a person, a time, a placeand#151;with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa,
The Sacred Gaze discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpret them. Morgan questions how fear and disgust of images relate to one another and explains how scholars study the long and evolving histories of images as they pass from culture to culture. An intriguing strand of the narrative details how images have helped to shape popular conceptions of gender and masculinity. The opening chapter considers definitions of "visual culture" and how these relate to the traditional practice of art history.
Amply illustrated with more than seventy images from diverse religious traditions, this masterful interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive and accessible resource for everyone interested in how religious images and visual practice order space and time, communicate with the transcendent, and embody forms of communion with the divine. The Sacred Gaze is a vital introduction to the study of the visual culture of religions.
About the Author
David Morgan is the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor in Christianity and the Arts, and Professor of Humanities and Art History in Christ College, Valparaiso University. He is author of several books, including Visual Piety (California, 1998) and Protestants and Pictures (1999), and coeditor with Sally M. Promey of The Visual Culture of American Religions (California, 2001).
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
I. Questions and Definitions
1. Defining Visual Culture
2. Visual Practice and the Function of Images
3. The Covenant with Images
II. Images Between Cultures
4. The Violence of Seeing: Idolatry and Iconoclasm
5. The Circulation of Images in Mission History
III. The Social Life of Pictures
6. Engendering Vision: Absent Fathers and Women with Beards
7. National Icons: Bibles, Flags, and Jesus in American Civil Religion
Conclusion
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index