Key Terms in Material Religion

S. Brent Plate is a writer, lecturer and Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA. He is co-founder and managing editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. His publications include The History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects, Religion and Film, and The Religion and Film Reader.

Brent Plate has marshalled an ambitious, and wide-ranging, lexicon of regularly deployed terms (37 in all) which help 'to show us the importance of the material world in the making and practising of religion'.

• Introduction to Material Religion, S. Brent Plate1. Aesthetics, Inken Prohl (Professor of Religious Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany)2. Belief - Robert A. Orsi (Professor of Religion, Northwestern University, USA)3. Body - Angela Zito (Professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies, New York University, USA)4. Brain/mind - Ann Taves (Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)5. City - Francis Dodsworth (Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Kingston University London, UK), Elena Vacchelli (Senior Research Fellow in Gender and Migration, Middlesex Univesrity London, UK) and Sophie Watson (Professor of Sociology, The Open University, UK)6. Collection - Crispin Paine (Honorary Lecturer, UCL, UK)7. Digital - Gregory Price Grieve (Associate Professor, University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA)8. Display – Ivan Gaskell (Professor of Cultural History and Museum Studies; Curator and Head of the Focus Gallery Project, Bard Graduate Centre, USA)9. Dress - Annelies Moors (Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)10. Emotion – Anna M. Gade (Professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)11. Fetish - Bruno Latour (Professor at Sciences Po Paris, France)12. Food - Nora L. Rubel (Associate Professor, University of Rochester, USA)13. Gender - Deborah Whitehead (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorada, Boulder, USA)14. Icon/image - Robert Maniura (Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)15. Magic - Peter Pels (Professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands)16. Maps – Anita Patil-Deshmukh (Executive Director of PUKAR, India)17. Mask - Allen F. Roberts, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)18. Medium - Birgit Meyer (Professor of Religious Studies, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands)19. Memory – Oren Stier (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Florida International University, USA)20. Movement - Ann Pellegrini (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, New York University, USA)21. Prayer - Anderson Blanton (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Studies of the American South, UNC, USA)22. Race - Roberto Lint-Sagarena (Associate Professor of American Studies, Middlebury College, USA)23. Ritual - Ron Grimes (Director of Ritual Studies International and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada)24. Sacred - David Chidester (Professor of Comparative Religion, University of Cape Town, South Africa)25. Screen - S. Brent Plate (Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA)26. Sensation - David Howes (Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University, Canada)27. Sign - Wei-Cheng Lin (Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)28. Smell - James McHugh (Assistant Professor of Religion, University of Southern California, USA)29. Sound - Isaac Weiner (Assistant Professor in Religious Studies, Ohio State University, USA)30. Space - Tom Tweed (Professor, Harold and Martha Welch Endowed Chair in American Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA)31. Spirit - Peter van der Veer (Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, Germany)32. Taste - Rich Freeman (Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, USA)33. Technology - Kathryn Lofton (Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University, USA)34. Thing - David Morgan (Professor of Religious Studies, Duke University, USA)35. Touch - Marleen de Witte (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)36. Vision - Robert S. Nelson (Professor, Yale University, USA)37. Words - S. Brent Plate (Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA)BibliographyIndex