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The Embodied Eye

Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling
by David Morgan (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Feb 2012
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9780520424555
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 50 b/w photographs
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About the Book

David Morgan builds on his previous groundbreaking work to offer this new, systematically integrated theory of the study of religion as visual culture. Providing key tools for scholars across disciplines studying the materiality of religions, Morgan gives an accessibly written theoretical overview including case studies of the ways seeing is related to touching, hearing, feeling, and such ephemeral experiences as dreams, imagination, and visions. The case studies explore both the high and low of religious visual culture: Catholic traditions of the erotic Sacred Heart of Jesus, the unrecognizability of the Virgin in the Fatima apparitions, the prehistory of Warner Sallman’s face of Jesus, and more. Basing the study of religious images and visual practices in the relationship between seeing and the senses, Morgan argues against reductionist models of “the gaze,” demonstrating that vision is not something that occurs in abstraction, but is a fundamental way of embodying the human self.



About the Author

David Morgan is Professor of Religion at Duke University. He is the author of several books, including The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice and Visual Piety (both from UC Press).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

Part One. Culture’s Two Bodies
1. Vision and Embodiment
2. The Body in Question
3. Ways of Seeing
4. Icon and Interface

Part Two. The Senses of Belief
5. The Matter of the Heart: Touching and Seeing
6. The Look of Sympathy: Feeling and Seeing
7. The Enchantment of Media: Hearing and Seeing
8. At the Cusp of Invisibility: Visions, Dreams, and Images

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Reviews

“This rewarding book will provoke thought and re-vision. . . . Highly recommended.”
— Choice
"With clarity and great insight, Morgan scrutinizes ways of engaging with religious worlds and consider how such worlds are made habitable.... A compelling read and one that allows for cross-fertilizing between different academic fields and disciplines."
— American Anthropologist
“Morgan’s clever and penetrating academic analysis of case studies provides his text with profundity and interest. . . . I highly recommend this book. Even further, for religion and visual culture scholars, Embodied Eye should be required reading.”
— Religious Studies Review
“The Embodied Eye is a first-rate work of scholarship, and anyone piqued by these subjects will find David Morgan’s pioneering vision deeply satisfying.”
— Image
“Excellent analysis of the social dynamics of the visual field and the capacity of images to co-create worlds and community identity.”
— Journal Of Religion In Europe
"A powerful argument for 'materializing the study of religions'."
— Art and Christianity
"Exploring a dazzling variety of religious imagery, David Morgan shows how vision functions as an active, physical process, embedded in bodily experience and profoundly shaped by social practice. Morgan's bold, thoughtful interpretations will fascinate art historians and students of visual culture as well as historians of religion.” -Pepe Karmel, Department of Art History, New York University

"The Embodied Eye is an important and truly groundbreaking book. It represents a substantive and quite fascinating extension of David Morgan's previous work- especially as it impressively shows us how 'seeing' is the primary medium of social life, and materially integrates the body of the individual and the body of the group. Morgan is unquestionably the pioneering theorist in the whole emergent field of Visual and Culture Studies as it relates to religion and art." -Norman Girardot, University Distinguished Professor, Lehigh University

“Under David Morgan’s inspiring guidance, readers are taken on a dazzling journey through religious images that mediate worlds of faith. Embedding vision in the body, this book stands out with its thought-provoking approach to religious media as material and embodied interfaces that underpin the social construction of the sacred.” -Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University