Trends in Contemporary Research on Shamanism

Numen ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DuBois
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Art History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
History Of Anthropology ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cognitive Study

Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing since the early 1990s in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, cognitive sciences, ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, art history, and ethnobotany. The survey demonstrates a continued strong interest in specific ethnographic case studies focusing on communities which make use of shamanic practices. Shamanic traditions are increasingly studied within their historical and political contexts, with strong attention to issues of research ideology. New trends in the study of cultural revitalization, neoshamanism, archaeology, gender, the history of anthropology, and the cognitive study of religion are highlighted.

scholarly journals Is Art History of China Useless in a Pandemic?

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng He Schöneweiß
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Life Crisis ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Core ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of

The study of Chinese art has long been a specialised field bridging the disciplines of art history and Chinese studies. This essay challenges, as always in a real-life crisis, the usefulness of art history of China in the current Covid-19 pandemic. The agency of art historians is put under the historiographical grill. Through two brief case studies, the essay argues that art historians, though as mortal and fragile, are actually professionally equipped to strike the core consequences of the pandemic in its social, political, and cultural aspects.

Zen and Material Culture

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Multiple Audiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Tea Ceremony ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
Vast Range

The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a primarily minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. By contrast, this volume calls attention to the vast range of “stuff” in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Sōtō, Rinzai, and Ōbaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nine authors from the cognate fields of art history and religious studies as well as the history of material culture analyze these “Zen matters” in all four senses of the phrase: the interdisciplinary study of Zen matters (objects and images) ultimately speaks to larger Zen matters (ideas, ideals) that matter (in the predicate sense) to both male and female practitioners, often because such matters (economic considerations) help to ensure the cultural and institutional survival of the tradition. Zen and Material Culture expands the study of Zen Buddhism, art history, and Japanese material/visual culture by examining the objects and images of everyday Zen practice, not just its texts, institutions, or elite masterpieces. As a result, this volume is aimed at multiple audiences whose interests lie at the intersection of Zen art, architecture, history, ritual, tea ceremony, women’s studies, and the fine line between Buddhist materiality and materialism.

scholarly journals Relationel komparatisme

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (127) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Anne Ring Petersen ◽  
Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Olaudah Equiano ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Globalized World

This article addresses a question crucial to contemporary cultural analysis: the question of how to compare and what to compare in a globalized world. Modern comparativism has effectively undermined the very foundation of historical comparativism, i.e. the idea of confined and segregated (national) cultures and Eurocentric perspectives and perceptions of what is historically significant, and what is not. The article opens with a discussion of some important critical revisions of comparative methodologies in the fields of comparative literature and art history, and then moves on to call for a relational comparativism that is attentive to three aspects: context, dynamics/agency and circulation. To indicate what the implications of a relational comparativism might be, we conclude with two case studies of the autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and the commemorative sculpture I Am Queen Mary (2018) by artists Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle. Both works are related to the history of slavery; a history that in significant ways points to the need for rethinking comparativism.

Introduction: A Comparative Study on Notions of the Secular in the Debate on Thought for the Day in the United Kingdom and the Nepali Debate on Secularism

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-328
Author(s):  
Tim Karis ◽  
Johanna Buss
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of

The joint introduction explores the history of academic understanding of “the secular” within the field of Religious Studies. We also introduce our two case studies.

scholarly journals Medieval illuminated manuscripts: Online images and resources

2017 ◽  
Vol 78 (6) ◽  
pp. 334
Author(s):  
Robert Miller
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

With their rich representation of medieval life and thought, illuminated manuscripts serve as primary sources for scholars in any number of fields: history, literature, art history, women’s studies, religious studies, philosophy, the history of science, and more.

Materials for the history of the gospel-Baptist movement in Ukraine

1996 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
S. Golovaschenko ◽  
Petro Kosuha
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
First Results ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fruitful Cooperation ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The report is based on the first results of the study "The History of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Ukraine", carried out in 1994-1996 by the joint efforts of the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Odessa Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian Baptists. A large-scale description and research of archival sources on the history of evangelical movements in our country gave the first experience of fruitful cooperation between secular and church researchers.

The problem of periodization of the history of religion

1997 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Borys Lobovyk
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Religious Development ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Religion

An important problem of religious studies, the history of religion as a branch of knowledge is the periodization process of the development of religious phenomenon. It is precisely here, as in focus, that the question of the essence and meaning of the religious development of the human being of the world, the origin of beliefs and cult, the reasons for the changes in them, the place and role of religion in the social and spiritual process, etc., are converging.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.

Entangled Trees and Arboreal Networks of Sensitive Environments

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Birgit Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Tropical Trees ◽  
Atmospheric Change ◽  
Media Study ◽  
Gutta Percha ◽  
History Of ◽  
Study Perspective ◽  
Nature Perception ◽  
Technological Perspective ◽  
Tall Tower

The article discusses how current mediated conditions change nature perception from a media study perspective. The article is based on different case studies such as the current sensation of atmospheric change through sensible media attached to trees which get published via Twitter, the meteorologist Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory and the use of gutta percha derived from tropical trees for the production of cables in the history of telegraphy. For analysing the examples, the perspective of »media as environments« is flipped to »environments as media«, because this focus doesn’t approach media from a networked and technological perspective primarily but makes productive the elemental character of basic »media« like air, earth and water

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