Materializing the Bible: Scripture, Sensation, Place
Ebook
What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anthropologist James Bielo explores a diverse range of practices and places that “materialize the Bible,” including gardens, theme parks, shrines, museums, memorials, exhibitions, theatrical productions, and other forms of replication. Integrating ethnographic, archival, and mass media data, case studies focus primarily on U.S. Christianity from the late 19th-century to the present.
Composed as 20 short chapters that may be read in any order, the book is divided into three sections. Section I, “Variations on Replication,” analyzes examples that recontextualize elements from the (actual or imagined) biblical past. Section II, “The Power of Nature,” turns to the natural world associated with Christian scripture and how it is mobilized as a privileged media. Section III, “Choreographing Experience,” examines lived interactions with the affordances of materializing the Bible.
Bielo argues that materializing the Bible works as an authorizing practice to intensify intimacies with scripture and circulate potent ideologies. Performed through the sensory experience of bodies, physical technologies, and infrastructures of place, Bielo illustrates how this phenomenon is always, ultimately, about expressions of power.
Explores the many instances in which the Bible has been materialized throughout the world, including miniatures, theme parks, re-enactments, and advertising.
The first book to focus on the sensory and experiential materializations of Christianity
Considers the topic as a global phenomenon, providing case studies from the USA, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Italy, U.K., Philippines, and Germany
Short essay format means the content can be read in any order, making it accessible to all levels
Introduction
Part 1: Variations on Replication
1. 1:1
2. Miniaturizing
3. Re-Enacting
4. Imagineering
5. Plastic Jesus
6. Ways of Remaining
Part 2: The Power of Nature
7. Flora
8. Fauna
9. Ingesting the Word
10. How Stones Do Things
Part 3: Choreographing Experience
Circulation
11. Miracles and Lavatories
12. Greetings From...
13. Like-able Me, Like-able There
Design
14. In Place, In Motion
15. Interactivity
16. Engulfed I
17. Engulfed II
Classification
18. In the Garden
19. Rev. Ruth's Yard Poetics
20. Four Crosses Over Waterbury
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
James Bielo has a gift for explaining complicated concepts in a highly accessible manner, which is on display throughout this book. The research process is impressive and the focus on materializing the biblical text is superb as it creates innovative links between scholarship across adjacent fields, including art history, history, folklore studies, tourism studies, and anthropology.
- Title: Materializing the Bible: Scripture, Sensation, Place
- Author: James S. Bielo
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350065055, 9781350260252, 1350260258, 1350065056
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350065055
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T02:24:06Z
James S. Bielo is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. He is the author of four books, most recently Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (2018), and is the co-founder and lead curator for the digital scholarship project Materializing the Bible.