1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body is the first comprehensive volume to feature multireligious cross-cultural perspectives on the body and embodiment. Featuring multidisciplinary approaches and methodologies from the humanities and the social sciences, it addresses the body and embodied religiosity in theological, ethical, and cultural contexts. Comprised of 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, the handbook is divided into four parts:
- Theology and Embodied Religiosity
- Gender, Sexuality, and Body Regulations
- Ritual and Performance
- Religion, Healing, and the Future of the Body
Each part examines central issues, debates, and problems in relation to global belief systems, including embodiments of love, transfiguration, the secular body, disability, body language, maternal bodies, embodied emotions, celibacy, ecology and the body, reshaping the corporal body, initiation rites, physiology, Tantra, Reiki practice, religious experience, technological body modifications, and ethics and the body.
Providing a breadth of rich and innovative research, it is a must-read for students and scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and cultural and gender studies.
Introduction Yudit Kornberg Greenberg and George Pati
Part I. Theology and Embodied Religiosity
1. Subtle Bodies and Ecology: Intersubjectivity, Alterity, and New Materialism Jay Johnston
2. Affect and Embodied Emotions Adam Beyt
3. Embodiments of Love in Jewish Sources Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
4. Apophatic Theophanies: Incarnational Knowledge of God in Early Eastern Christianity Lisa D. Maugans Driver
5. Disability and Embodied Theology Courtney Wilder
6. ‘We Shall Do and We Shall Understand’: Embodied Theology in Modern Judaism Sam S. B. Shonkoff
7. Transfiguration Márcio Vilar
8. The Ruse of Body Language among Muslim Traditionists Ossama Abdelgawwad
9. Avoidance, Aversion, and Intellectualization: Embodied Brokenness in White Christianity Marcia Mount Shoop
10. Ecological Theology and the Body Deborah Guess
Part II. Gender, Sexuality, and Body Regulations
11. Bodies of Becoming: The Regulation of Religion and Gender and the Subjectivation of the Secular Body Zaheeda P. Alibhai
12. Maternal Bodies and Religions Florence Pasche Guignard
13. Semen and the Self in a Teaching and Prayer Justin Jaron Lewis
14. "I Too Desired a Child": Sufi Hagiography, Ibn Khafif, and the Problem of Celibacy Matthew R. Hotham
15. Corporeal Conscientization: Heralding the Good News of Black Women’s Bodies Courtney Bryant
16. Islamic Shi’i Ethics and the Biopolitics of the Maternal Body Ladan Rahbari
Part III. Ritual and Performance
17. Tantric Bodies, AI Immortality, and a Yogurt Model of Self Loriliai Biernacki
18. Holy Heads: Re-Membering John the Baptist and Husayn in Early Christian and Islamic Pilgrimage Mary Thurlkill
19. Mothers in the Temple: Motherhood, Filial Piety, And Salvation Rituals In Premodern Japanese Buddhism Marta Sanvido
20. Body, Community, Cosmos: A Sìaiva Siddhānta Rite of Initiation Adam Newman
21. (In-)Conspicuous Consumption: Food, the Child Body, and Inversion of Hardcore Rituals in Hindu Tantras Sundari Johansen Hurwitt
22. The Buddhist Body in a Pill: Notes Toward a Material History of Tantra in Tibet James Gentry
23. Performing Kṛṣṇa’s Body in Kerala George Pati
24. Sikh Langar: Tasting the Transcendent Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh
Part IV. Religion, Healing, and the Future of the Body
25. Reiki Practice and the Body as Mediator for Religiosity Dori-Michelle Beeler and Jojan L. Jonker
26. Further Explorations of/in Daoist Embodiment Louis Komjathy 康思奇
27. Spiritual Contraptions: Religious Experience and Psychiatrized Bodies in the Nineteenth Century Kyle Derkson
28. The Thai Body: Understanding the Principles of Medicine, Physiology, and the Massage Tradition through Inscriptions, Texts, and the Material Culture of Wat Phō Saran Suebsantiwongse
29. Religion, Body, Excreta Sarah Nahar
30. The Future Body: Religious Approaches to Advanced Technological Body-Modifications Michael Caligiuri.
Index
Biography
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg is George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Endowed Chair of Religion and Founding Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Rollins College, Florida.
George Pati is Surjit S. Patheja Endowed Chair in World Religions and Ethics and Professor of South Asian Religions and Cultures, Department of Philosophy and Theology at Valparaiso University, Indiana.
