Join a GTU Class: Physical Religion

Objects in Motion: Approaches to Physical Religion through Mapping, Movement, Materiality. This research collaborative asks, ‘what force do material things, physical environments, and bodily experiences exercise in religious life, past and present?’ In the first year of the Collaborative’s seminar, we will consider the genealogy and historiography of the ‘material turn’ as it relates to studies of theology and religion as part of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion/theology. We will focus on various theoretical and methodological approaches to material sources (such as, but not limited to cognitive anthropology, archaeology, ‘thing theory’, the emergence of the Benjaminian ‘aura’, psychogeography, and the idea of the vibrancy of matter, as conceived by scholars from Coleridge to Jane Bennett). After establishing some theoretical foundations and methodological groundings, we will workshop how these capacious ideas apply to our own research through specific, culturally-contextualized case studies from 6th-century artifacts to the latest wearable VR technology.

Available in-person and Zoom.