Publications

RHYTHMS Fall 2023: Concepts under Repair

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 03:13:21 +0000

RHYTHMS Fall 2023: Concepts under Repair Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/20/2023 - 20:13

The second issue of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture’s pamphlet series, RHYTHMS, is now available.

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The Third Spaces of Digital Religion

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

The Third Spaces of Digital Religion Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/20/2023 - 00:00

This exciting volume explores how religious meaning is generated and performed in our present digital media ecosystem. It uses the spatial metaphor of a third space to visualize the mobility of everyday religion and to explore the dynamic ways in which contemporary subjects imagine, produce, and navigate new religious and spiritual places.

Comprised of seven original essays, this book provides a rigorous discussion of the complex intersections of the digital and religion, demonstrating how third spaces of religion stand out by virtue of their in-betweenness. They exist between private and public, between institution and individual, between authority and individual autonomy, between large media framings and individual "pro-sumption," and between local and translocal. Including probing analysis of how Muslim, Catholic, and Neo-Pagan identities are cultivated and developed online, case studies reflect on the creative outcomes of this condition of in-betweenness and the emergence of other places of religious and spiritual meaning.

Blending theoretical analysis with grounded empirical research, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary religion, media and religion, sociology of religion, religion, and popular culture.

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RHYTHMS Fall 2022: Writing in Times of Urgency

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 06:00:00 +0000

RHYTHMS Fall 2022: Writing in Times of Urgency Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 10/23/2022 - 00:00

Nabil Echchaibi , Nathan Schneider

The first issue of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture’s pamphlet series, RHYTHMS, is now available.

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Does God Make the Man?: Media, Religion, and the Crisis of Masculinity

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Does God Make the Man?: Media, Religion, and the Crisis of Masculinity Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/02/2015 - 00:00

By Stewart M. Hoover and Curtis D. Coats

Many believe that religion plays a positive role in men’s identity development, with religion promoting good behavior, and morality. In contrast, we often assume that the media is a negative influence for men, teaching them to be rough and violent, and to ignore their emotions. In Does God Make the Man?, Stewart M. Hoover and Curtis D. Coats draw on extensive interviews and participant observation with both Evangelical and non-Evangelical men, including Catholics as well as Protestants, to argue that neither of these assumptions is correct.

Dismissing the easy notion that media encourages toxic masculinity and religion is always a positive influence, Hoover and Coats argue that not only are the linkages between religion, media, and masculinity not as strong and substantive as has been assumed, but the ways in which these relations actually play out may contradict received views. Over the course of this fascinating book they examine crises, contradictions, and contestations: crises about the meaning of masculinity and about the lack of direction men experience from their faith communities; contradictions between men’s religious lives and media lives, and contestations among men’s ideas about what it means to be a man.

The book counters common discussions about a “crisis of masculinity,” showing that actual men do not see the world the way the “crisis talk” has portrayed it—and interestingly, even Evangelical men often do not see religion as part of the solution.

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The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/09/2012 - 00:00

By Lynn Schofield Clark

Ninety-five percent of American kids have Internet access by age 11; the average number of texts a teenager sends each month is well over 3,000. More families report that technology makes life with children more challenging, not less, as parents today struggle with questions previous generations never faced: Is my thirteen-year-old responsible enough for a Facebook page? What will happen if I give my nine year-old a cell phone?

In The Parent App, Lynn Schofield Clark provides what families have been sorely lacking: smart, sensitive, and effective strategies for coping with the dilemmas of digital and mobile media in modern life. Clark set about interviewing scores of mothers and fathers, identifying not only their various approaches, but how they differ according to family income. Parents in upper-income families encourage their children to use media to enhance their education and self-development and to avoid use that might distract them from goals of high achievement. Lower income families, in contrast, encourage the use of digital and mobile media in ways that are respectful, compliant toward parents, and family-focused. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks, and whatever the parenting style or economic bracket, parents experience anxiety about how to manage new technology. With the understanding of a parent of teens and the rigor of a social scientist, Clark tackles a host of issues, such as family communication, online predators, cyber bullying, sexting, gamer drop-outs, helicopter parenting, technological monitoring, the effectiveness of strict controls, and much more.

The Parent App is more than an advice manual; as Clark admits, technology changes too rapidly for that. Rather, she puts parenting in context, exploring the meaning of media challenges and the consequences of our responses-for our lives as family members and as members of society.

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Media, Spiritualities and Social Change

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:00:00 +0000

Media, Spiritualities and Social Change Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/01/2010 - 00:00

Edited by: Stewart M. Hoover & Monica Emerich

This book maps emergent global practices and discourses of mediated, spiritualized social change. Bringing together scholarly perspectives from around the world and across disciplines, the authors explore how ‘spiritualities’ express themselves through and with media – from television to Internet, from fashion to art murals – as socially transforming voices and practices. The very fluidity of the meaning of spirituality is part of its appeal: it can service as easily as a reference to a perceived common essence of humanness as it can work to legitimate market-based practices. While the involvement of spiritual life with social transformation is certainly not peculiar to contemporary societies, what has changed is the upsurge of media in these matters. In the specific case of religion, globalization has unleashed a cascade of unexpected and unpredictable implications, many of which are consequences of the media. The authors here show ways in which media and spiritualities are engaged around the world in efforts to restructure paradigms, institutions, beliefs and practices to affect social change. View more information.

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Media and Religion

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Media and Religion Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/01/2009 - 00:00

by Stewart M. Hoover

The Center White Papers Series presents essays on important and emerging issues in media and religion. They are intended for a nonspecialist audience and seek to lay out the rationale for academic study and teaching focused on the intersections between media and religion. This paper is available for wide distribution and can be found here in PDF format. Limited numbers of hardcopies can also be requested directly from the Center.

White papers are copyrighted but may be quoted and cited without further permission.

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Fundamentalisms and the Media

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Fundamentalisms and the Media Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 08/09/2009 - 00:00

Edited by: Stewart M. Hoover and Nadia Kaneva

The turn of the twenty-first century has seen an ever-increasing profile for religion, contrary to long-standing predictions of its decline. Instead, the West has experienced what some call a ‘realignment’ of religion where it persists in conjunction with other institutions and structures. Outside the West, religion is an ever more prominent force in social and political movements of both reform and retrenchment. Across these contexts, no issue in religion is of as much concern as fundamentalism – or rather the fundamentalisms within various traditions – which are seen to be fomenting religious, social, ethnic, and political tension and conflict.

The contributions to this volume represent the first effort to look at ‘fundamentalisms’ and ‘the media’ together and address the resulting relations and interactions from critical perspectives of history, technology, geography, and practice. The result lays important groundwork for scholarship on these new and increasingly important phenomena.

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Religion, Media, and the Marketplace

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Religion, Media, and the Marketplace Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/01/2007 - 00:00

Edited by: Lynn Schofield Clark

Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in increasingly visible ways. We see it in myriad forms-in movies, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, on Internet shrines and kitschy Web “altars,” and in the recent advertising campaign that attacked fuel-guzzling SUVs by posing the question: What would Jesus drive?

In Religion, Media, and the Marketplace, scholars in history, media studies, and sociology explore this intersection of the secular and the sacred. Topics include how religious leaders negotiate between the competing aims of the mainstream and the devout in the commercial marketplace, how politics and religious beliefs combine to shape public policy initiatives, how the religious “other” is represented in the media, and how consumer products help define the practice of different faiths.

At a time when religious fundamentalism in the United States and throughout the world is inseparable from political aims, this interdisciplinary look at the mutual influences between religion and the media is essential reading for scholars from a wide variety of disciplines.

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Religion in the Media Age

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 06:00:00 +0000

Religion in the Media Age Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/26/2006 - 00:00

By Stewart M. Hoover

Looking at the everyday interaction of religion and media in our cultural lives, Religion in the Media Age is an exciting new assessment of the state of modern religiosity. Recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions toward more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry, and the Internet are central to this process, cutting through the monolithic assertions of world religions and giving access to more diverse and fragmented ideals. While the volume and variety of information traveling through global media changes modes of religious thought and commitment, the human desire for spirituality also invigorates popular culture itself, recreating commodities – film blockbusters, world sport, popular music – as contexts for religious meaning.

Drawing on fascinating research into household media consumption Stewart M. Hoover charts the way in which media and religion intermingle and collide in the cultural experience of media audiences. The result will be essential reading for everyone interested in how today’s mass media relate to contemporary religious and spiritual life.

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