Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136507051
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār’s poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet ‘speak’ to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women’s studies.
Interpreting Devotion
Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136507051
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār’s poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet ‘speak’ to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women’s studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136507051
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār’s poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet ‘speak’ to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women’s studies.
The Bloomsbury Companion to Hindu Studies
Author: Jessica Frazier
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 147256717X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
Originally published as The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies, this Companion offers the definitive guide to Hinduism and study in this area. Now available in paperback, The Bloomsbury Companion to Hindu Studies covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, valuably, how the various topics intersect through detailed reading paths. Featuring a series of indispensible research tools, including a detailed list of resources, chronology and diagrams summarizing content, this is the essential tool for anyone working in Hindu Studies.
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 147256717X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
Originally published as The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies, this Companion offers the definitive guide to Hinduism and study in this area. Now available in paperback, The Bloomsbury Companion to Hindu Studies covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, valuably, how the various topics intersect through detailed reading paths. Featuring a series of indispensible research tools, including a detailed list of resources, chronology and diagrams summarizing content, this is the essential tool for anyone working in Hindu Studies.
Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism
Author: EMILIA. BACHRACH
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197648592
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Vārtā Sāhitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg's early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early-modern north India, these texts have continued to be immensely popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat-the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of reading inform and are informed by both intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197648592
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Vārtā Sāhitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg's early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early-modern north India, these texts have continued to be immensely popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat-the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of reading inform and are informed by both intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.
Interpreting Jesus
Author: Gerald O'Collins
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1592440762
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Interpreting Jesus draws on traditional teaching and the best scripture scholarship to construct a Christology which centers on the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The aim is to explore and clarify what Christian belief in the risen Jesus as Son of God and Savior of the world originally meant and now continues to mean. Special features include an excursus on the theological implications of the Shroud of Turin and a return to a theme which contemporary Christology has widely neglected, the blood of Jesus and its redemptive symbolism. The book ends by linking belief in Jesus with the non-Christian world. Father O'Collins has previously written many articles and shorter works on Jesus Christ. This Christology represents a mature climax of those earlier publications.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1592440762
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Interpreting Jesus draws on traditional teaching and the best scripture scholarship to construct a Christology which centers on the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The aim is to explore and clarify what Christian belief in the risen Jesus as Son of God and Savior of the world originally meant and now continues to mean. Special features include an excursus on the theological implications of the Shroud of Turin and a return to a theme which contemporary Christology has widely neglected, the blood of Jesus and its redemptive symbolism. The book ends by linking belief in Jesus with the non-Christian world. Father O'Collins has previously written many articles and shorter works on Jesus Christ. This Christology represents a mature climax of those earlier publications.
Signs of Devotion
Author: Virginia Blanton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047984
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047984
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
Devotional Visualities
Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350214205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350214205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Interpreting Jesus
Author: Gerald O'Collins SJ
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725201429
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
Interpreting Jesus draws on traditional teaching and the best scripture scholarship to construct a Christology which centers on the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The aim is to explore and clarify what Christian belief in the risen Jesus as Son of God and Savior of the world originally meant and now continues to mean. Special features include an excursus on the theological implications of the Shroud of Turin and a return to a theme which contemporary Christology has widely neglected, the blood of Jesus and its redemptive symbolism. The book ends by linking belief in Jesus with the non-Christian world. Father O'Collins has previously written many articles and shorter works on Jesus Christ. This Christology represents a mature climax of those earlier publications.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725201429
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
Interpreting Jesus draws on traditional teaching and the best scripture scholarship to construct a Christology which centers on the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The aim is to explore and clarify what Christian belief in the risen Jesus as Son of God and Savior of the world originally meant and now continues to mean. Special features include an excursus on the theological implications of the Shroud of Turin and a return to a theme which contemporary Christology has widely neglected, the blood of Jesus and its redemptive symbolism. The book ends by linking belief in Jesus with the non-Christian world. Father O'Collins has previously written many articles and shorter works on Jesus Christ. This Christology represents a mature climax of those earlier publications.
Transgressive Devotion
Author: Natalie Wigg-Stevenson
Publisher: SCM Press
ISBN: 033405947X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Book Description
Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.
Publisher: SCM Press
ISBN: 033405947X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Book Description
Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.
Bhakti and Power
Author: John Stratton Hawley
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295745525
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Bhakti, a term ubiquitous in the religious life of South Asia, has meanings that shift dramatically according to context and sentiment. Sometimes translated as “personal devotion,” bhakti nonetheless implies and fosters public interaction. It is often associated with the marginalized voices of women and lower castes, yet it has also played a role in perpetuating injustice. Barriers have been torn down in the name of bhakti, while others have been built simultaneously. Bhakti and Power provides an accessible entry into key debates around issues such as these, presenting voices and vignettes from the sixth century to the present and from many parts of India’s cultural landscape. Written by a wide range of engaged scholars, this volume showcases one of the most influential concepts in Indian history—still a major force in the present day.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295745525
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Bhakti, a term ubiquitous in the religious life of South Asia, has meanings that shift dramatically according to context and sentiment. Sometimes translated as “personal devotion,” bhakti nonetheless implies and fosters public interaction. It is often associated with the marginalized voices of women and lower castes, yet it has also played a role in perpetuating injustice. Barriers have been torn down in the name of bhakti, while others have been built simultaneously. Bhakti and Power provides an accessible entry into key debates around issues such as these, presenting voices and vignettes from the sixth century to the present and from many parts of India’s cultural landscape. Written by a wide range of engaged scholars, this volume showcases one of the most influential concepts in Indian history—still a major force in the present day.
Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites
Author: Gretchen Buggeln
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442269472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sitesencourages readers to consider the history of religion as integral to American culture and provides a practical guide for any museum to include interpretation of religious traditions in its programs and exhibits. Combining both theoretical essays and practical case studies from a wide cross section of the field, the book explores how museums are finding new ways to connect with audiences about this important aspect of American history. This book explores the practical and interpretive problems that museums encounter when they include religion in their interpretation: How do we make sure visitors don't think the museum is taking the side of any particular religious group, or proselytizing, or crossing church-state boundaries? How do we spin out a rich story with the available artifact base? What are the opportunities and perils of telling particular religious stories in a multicultural context? These and other questions are addressed in a series of interpretive essays and case studies that capture the experimental and innovative religion programming that is beginning to find a place in American history museums. An introduction by Gretchen Buggeln places the subject of religion and museums in the intellectual context of national and international scholarship. Case studies cover a range of topics and venues that include outdoor museums, historic houses and exhibits; interpretive issues of secular and sacred contexts; and interpretive techniques like dialogue, music and first person accounts. A concluding essay suggests a publicly oriented historiography of religion for American museums and historic sites.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442269472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sitesencourages readers to consider the history of religion as integral to American culture and provides a practical guide for any museum to include interpretation of religious traditions in its programs and exhibits. Combining both theoretical essays and practical case studies from a wide cross section of the field, the book explores how museums are finding new ways to connect with audiences about this important aspect of American history. This book explores the practical and interpretive problems that museums encounter when they include religion in their interpretation: How do we make sure visitors don't think the museum is taking the side of any particular religious group, or proselytizing, or crossing church-state boundaries? How do we spin out a rich story with the available artifact base? What are the opportunities and perils of telling particular religious stories in a multicultural context? These and other questions are addressed in a series of interpretive essays and case studies that capture the experimental and innovative religion programming that is beginning to find a place in American history museums. An introduction by Gretchen Buggeln places the subject of religion and museums in the intellectual context of national and international scholarship. Case studies cover a range of topics and venues that include outdoor museums, historic houses and exhibits; interpretive issues of secular and sacred contexts; and interpretive techniques like dialogue, music and first person accounts. A concluding essay suggests a publicly oriented historiography of religion for American museums and historic sites.