Publications
Now showing items 1-60 of 176
Apocalyptic Imaginings
(2019)
The thematic section of this issue of JRFM deals with apocalyptic imaginings in literature and film. The articles address issues such as authority, authenticity, belief, imagining social futures, and art as social laboratory. ...
Drawn Stories, Moving Images. Comic Books and their Screen Adaptations
(2017)
The comic transcends the merely entertaining, and fans of comics become engaged and invested in the field through a range of activities. Major cities host regular comic conventions, attracting hundreds of thousands of ...
In Search of the Human. The Work of the Dardenne Brothers
(2016)
Close-ups of human faces and hands, shots that are anchored around human individuals, with landscapes or cityscapes only present in so far as they represent the environment in which these individuals live and act, a camera ...
Religion and Popular Music
(2020)
The interactions between popular music and religion are manyfold and highly complex. Popular music as an important part of popular culture is a means of communication. Music can transmit not only emotions and a sense of ...
Science-Fiction Movies and Religion
(2020)
In science fiction films, we explore remote universes and use yet unknown technologies – the world as we know it is left behind. But although the technical devices in these films are impressive and the science advances in ...
Thinking Methods in Media and Religion
(2015)
Inspired by a workshop held at the University of Zurich in November 2014, we inaugurate the Journal for Religion, Film and Media (JRFM) with a special issue dedicated to methodology. The field of media and religion is ...
Understanding Jesus in the Early Modern Period and Beyond. Across Text and Other Media
(2019)
This thematic issue seeks to provide a more nuanced and more complicated history of how historical narratives about the life of Jesus were produced and circulated in European culture. The focus on media is one of the most ...
Trauma, Memory and Religion
(2018)
How can we screen trauma? This question might lead the perception of documentary films about atrocities in the 20th and 21st centuries, like S21 THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE (Rithy Panh, CAMB/FR 2003) about Cambodia, ...
Film Farbe Fläche.
(2020)
Die nachträgliche Kolorierung des schwarzweißen Materials war in der Stummfilmepoche eine verbreitete Praxis. Die Filme wurden hand- oder schablonenkoloriert, viragiert und getont. Die häufig ostentativ ausgestellte ...
Act Two. What Makes Popular Christian Music “Popular”?. A Comparison Between Current US-American Contemporary Christian Music and German Popular Christian Music Using the Examples of Lauren Daigle and Koenige & Priester
(2020)
The article discusses the question “What makes Popular Christian Music ‘popular’?” by applying different (competing) concepts of the term “popular” so as to showcase by which criteria Popular Christian Music (labelled as ...
Act Three. Heavy Metal Bricolage. Religious Imagery and “Religionized” Visual Language in Music Videos
(2020)
Popular music’s use of visual media makes its listeners also its viewers. From concert posters, tickets stubs and stage design to music videos, CD covers and clothes, material visual products are utilized by bands and fans ...
Act One. Comfort the Waste Places, Defend the Violated Earth. An Ecofeminist Reading of Isaiah 51:1-52:6 and Tracy Chapman's "The Rape of the World".
(2020)
This paper compares the personification of Zion in Isaiah 51:1–52:6 as a mother and daughter with Tracy Chapman's 1995 song "The rape of the world" where the earth is portrayed as mother. I will explore the use of rape ...
Editorial: Apocalyptic Imaginings
(2019)
This editorial shows the impact of apocalyptic images and topoi referring to the ongoing Brexit-process in the United Kingdom and, thereby the editorial builds a bridge to the articels of this issue that analyse how diverse ...
Editorial: In Search of the Human. The Work of the Dardenne Brothers
(2016)
Editorial to Issue 2016, 2/2
Film, Parable, Reciprocity: Frederick Wiseman's "reality fictions" and Social Change
(2016)
This essay argues that social criticism may be an effect of Frederick Wiseman's "reality fiction" films only if that effect is understood as analogous to parable, that is, through an awakened responsiveness to the unknown ...
Mediality and Materiality in the History of Religions
(2015)
The article discusses possible terminologies for labelling historical materials. Drawing on the history of the city of Cairo around the 12th century – to the Fatimid era and to later Ayyubid times – it looks at the documents ...
Reading Bond Films through the Lens of “Religion”. Discourse of “the West and the Rest”
(2019)
Religion has been absent from the study of James Bond films. Similarly, James Bond has been absent from studies on religion and popular culture. This article aims to fill the gap by examining 25 Bond films through the lens ...
Punishment and Crime. The Reverse Order of Causality in The White Ribbon
(2018)
This article explores, within a sociological-psychological framework, the problematic moral emotions of spectators evoked by watching the film Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, DE/AT/FR/IT, 2009). As always ...
Rampant Lechers, Chaste Heroes. (De-)Sexualised Violence in Comic book Screen Adaptations
(2017)
Violence is a central element of comic book screen adaptations in both Hollywood (Marvel, DC) and Japan. Yet while sexual violence is openly shown in film versions of manga, coded sexualised violence dominates Western ...
Realistic Humanism: Luc Dardenne as a Philosopher and Filmmaker
(2016)
Luc Dardenne is not only a successful filmmaker together with his brother Jean-Pierre. He is also a stimulating philosopher who has reflected on the influence of Emmanuel Levinas on the brothers’ cinematic work. This article ...
Understanding Jesus in the Early Modern Period and Beyond. Between Text and Other Media. Editorial
(2019)
The exceptional and yet very human life of Jesus has been represented in a vast breadth of forms, from the visual to the textual, in a kind of intertextual relationship that is highly complex, in that it outreaches an ...
Using Media to Teach Religious Studies. Reflections on Second-order Mediatisation of Religions
(2017)
In terms of media theories, teaching religious studies provides a second-order mediatisation of religious phenomena – a mediatisation of phenomena already mediatised by religious traditions. That tension needs to be reflected ...
Using Media in Religious Studies. Strategies of Representing Religion in Scholarly Approaches: Editorial
(2017)
Editorial of JRFM 2017, 3/2
The soundscape of Pasolini’S GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW
(2019)
IL VANGELO SECONDO MATTEO (1964), by the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, is one of the most interesting and widely acclaimed film representations of the life of Jesus. Its reception in the Catholic world has ...
(Re)Making a Difference
(2015)
This article presents and discusses how mediatisation as a theory can be used to analyse two commercial videos, one promoting the organisation Catholics Come Home and the other Coca Cola. A core question in the current ...
Between Erudition and Faith. Jean-Jacques Chifflet’s Tract on the Shroud of Besançon (1624)
(2019)
The shroud of Besançon, a large cloth considered being a precious relic, an “imprint” left by Christ’s body on his burial linen, knew a period of intense veneration and public debate from the early 16th century to the end ...
The Banality of Ghosts. Searching for Humanness with Joshua Oppenheimer in THE ACT OF KILLING
(2018)
In The Act of Killing, (Joshua Oppenheimer, ID, DK 2012), Joshua Oppenheimer searches for humanness by assessing the rituals, routines and grammar of former perpetrators who played a role during the 1965/6 genocide in ...
Cross-media Transmission Processes: Marian Figures in TODO SOBRE MI MADRE (Pedro Almodóvar, ES 1999)
(2015)
This paper builds on aspects of the cultural studies perspective that understands art itself as a method of cultural analysis. This will be exemplified by focusing on how film as a cultural technique for framing and reframing ...
Deconstructing Gilgul, Finding Identity. Captain America and the Winter Soldier in a Judaistic Perspective
(2017)
Captain America and Bucky, characters who appear in Marvel Comics, seem to be temporally displaced. The article scrutinizes that temporal displacement, comparing it with the Judaistic concept of gilgul – the transmigration ...
The End of Desire
(2020)
This article explores the soteriological significance of desire in Сталкер (STALKER, Andrei Tarkovsky, RU 1979). At the heart of the film, deep within a paranormal and psychosomatic frontier called the Zone, is a space ...
Emulating Science. The Rhetorical Figures of Creationism
(2017)
This article compares forms of visual argumentation in the scientific study of evolution and Young-Earth Creationism, arguing that secular forms of scientific representation have affected the way creationists visually ...
Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden?. The Apocalypse in Margaret Atwood‘s MaddAddam Trilogy
(2019)
In the context of the ecological crisis, tales of the apocalypse have become a regular feature of the contemporary cultural imaginary, be it in popular feature films, non-fictional texts, or dystopian novels. Margaret ...
Jerusalem between Political Interests and Religious Promise
(2020)
This article focuses on the opening ceremony of the new US-Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. By analysing a live transmission of the ceremony, it aims at showing how Jerusalem is constructed as a "holy city" through ...
Is Superman a God?
(2020)
Some Remarks on the Jewish Life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu) in Early Modern Europe
(2019)
The Jewish Life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu) is perhaps one of the most infamous retellings of the gospel narrative of the pre-modern era. The present essay explores its reception and circulation of among both Jews and Christians ...
Someday our gods will be friends
(2020)
This article reflects on the recent tv-series ‘Vikings’ from a practical-theological perspective. We deal with the series as a serious expression of the relationship between film and religion. The narrative, reception, ...
Staging the Dead
(2015)
The body is one of the basic media that form and communicate gender. How important gender is for the perception of an individual becomes especially clear by looking at the exhibition of a dead body. Having nothing left ...
Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time
(2019)
The concept of time is culturally dependent. During different periods in the history of Western culture, differing conceptions of times competed for primacy, sometimes contradicting one another, sometimes complementing ...
“What God has joined...” Editorial
(2018)
What is marriage all about? How is it nowadays connected to religious traditions? This issue will search for answers.
Book Review: Monika Leisch-Kiesl: ZeichenSetzung / BildWahrnehmung. Toba Khedoori: Gezeichnete Malerei
(2017)
Published in Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst 2016, 347 pages, ISBN: 978-3-903131-29-3
Interlude. Paths of Destiny. Rosalía’s Spiritual Car Ride in AUNQUE ES DE NOCHE
(2020)
A critical review of Rosalia's music video for "Aunque es de noche" that focusses on media-transmitted, personal spirituality, female strength and the amalgamation of religious imageries.
On (Dang) Quesadillas and Nachos. Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Religion in the Films of Jared Hess
(2019)
Across his cinema, the US, Mormon director Jared Hess has represented the Mexican Other in ambiguous ways that affirm the humanity of the US’s southern neighbors while at the same time signaling them as irreconcilably ...
Parabolic Transcendence in Time and Narrative
(2020)
Subjectivity, memory, identity, and the invisible connections between individuals are all conspicuous within filmmaker Shane Carruth’s two award-winning indie sci-fi films, Primer (Shane Carruth, USA, 2004) and Upstream ...
Pedigree of Dualistic and Non-Dualistic Media: Grasping Extramedial Meanings
(2016)
The article provides suggestions concerning the cultural relevance and embeddedness of dualist and non-dualist media and demonstrates that the presence or absence of certain types of media has extra-medial relevance that ...
On the History and Hermeneutics of Comics
(2017)
What is a comic? The simple answer states that a comic is a drawn story that is picture- rather than text-oriented and told serially. In other words, a comic is a type of illustration. Realism is not its goal; rather a ...
Representations of Religion and Culture in Children’s Literature. An Analysis of othering Processes in Texts and Illustrations
(2018)
Literature is an important medium for representing and communicating world views and values. This article focuses on the representation of culture and religion and reveals constructions of identities in children’s literature. ...
Reality and Paternity in the Cinema of the Dardennes
(2016)
The Dardennes’ filmic production aims at restoring the missing link between human beings and the world that have been progressively undermined during the ultimate development of late-capitalist society. This contribution ...
Religion, Belief and Medial Layering of Communication: Perspectives from Studies in Visual Culture and Artistic Productions
(2015)
The paper analyses the relationship between religious practices, belief and the media based on the medial layering of communication. The arguments are situated within the fields of studies in visual culture and cultural ...
Religion and Communication Spaces
(2015)
Following the reflection initiated in his book The Spaces of Communication, Roger Odin suggests a new distinction between physical communication spaces and mental communication spaces (spaces that we have inside us). The ...