The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body

by Yudit Kornberg Greenberg (Editor), George Pati (Editor)

Overview

The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body is the first comprehensive volume to feature multireligious cross-cultural perspectives on the body and embodiment. Featuring multidisciplinary approaches and methodologies from the humanities and the social sciences, it addresses the body and embodied religiosity in theological, ethical, and cultural contexts. Comprised of 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, the handbook is divided into four parts:

• Theology and Embodied Religiosity
• Gender, Sexuality, and Body Regulations
• Ritual and Performance
• Religion, Healing, and the Future of the Body

Each part examines central issues, debates, and problems in relation to global belief systems, including embodiments of love, transfiguration, the secular body, disability, body language, maternal bodies, embodied emotions, celibacy, ecology and the body, reshaping the corporal body, initiation rites, physiology, Tantra, Reiki practice, religious experience, technological body modifications, and ethics and the body.

Providing a breadth of rich and innovative research, it is a must-read for students and scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and cultural and gender studies.

Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367528133
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/13/2025
Series:	Routledge Handbooks in Religion
Pages:	484
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Yudit Kornberg Greenberg is George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Endowed Chair of Religion and Founding Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Rollins College, Florida.

George Pati is Surjit S. Patheja Endowed Chair in World Religions and Ethics and Professor of South Asian Religions and Cultures, Department of Philosophy and Theology at Valparaiso University, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Introduction Yudit Kornberg Greenberg and George Pati 

Part I. Theology and Embodied Religiosity 

1. Subtle Bodies and Ecology: Intersubjectivity, Alterity, and New Materialism Jay Johnston 

2. Affect and Embodied Emotions Adam Beyt 

3. Embodiments of Love in Jewish Sources Yudit Kornberg Greenberg 

4. Apophatic Theophanies: Incarnational Knowledge of God in Early Eastern Christianity Lisa D. Maugans Driver 

5. Disability and Embodied Theology Courtney Wilder 

6. ‘We Shall Do and We Shall Understand’: Embodied Theology in Modern Judaism Sam S. B. Shonkoff 

7. Transfiguration Márcio Vilar 

8. The Ruse of Body Language among Muslim Traditionists Ossama Abdelgawwad 

9. Avoidance, Aversion, and Intellectualization: Embodied Brokenness in White Christianity Marcia Mount Shoop 

10. Ecological Theology and the Body Deborah Guess 

Part II. Gender, Sexuality, and Body Regulations 

11. Bodies of Becoming: The Regulation of Religion and Gender and the Subjectivation of the Secular Body Zaheeda P. Alibhai 

12. Maternal Bodies and Religions Florence Pasche Guignard 

13. Semen and the Self in a Teaching and Prayer Justin Jaron Lewis 

14. "I Too Desired a Child": Sufi Hagiography, Ibn Khafif, and the Problem of Celibacy Matthew R. Hotham 

15. Corporeal Conscientization: Heralding the Good News of Black Women’s Bodies Courtney Bryant

16. Islamic Shi’i Ethics and the Biopolitics of the Maternal Body Ladan Rahbari 

Part III. Ritual and Performance 

17. Tantric Bodies, AI Immortality, and a Yogurt Model of Self Loriliai Biernacki 

18. Holy Heads: Re-Membering John the Baptist and Husayn in Early Christian and Islamic Pilgrimage Mary Thurlkill 

19. Mothers in the Temple: Motherhood, Filial Piety, And Salvation Rituals In Premodern Japanese Buddhism Marta Sanvido 

20. Body, Community, Cosmos: A Sìaiva Siddhānta Rite of Initiation Adam Newman 

21. (In-)Conspicuous Consumption: Food, the Child Body, and Inversion of Hardcore Rituals in Hindu Tantras Sundari Johansen Hurwitt 

22. The Buddhist Body in a Pill: Notes Toward a Material History of Tantra in Tibet James Gentry 

23. Performing Kṛṣṇa’s Body in Kerala George Pati 

24. Sikh Langar: Tasting the Transcendent Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh 

Part IV. Religion, Healing, and the Future of the Body 

25. Reiki Practice and the Body as Mediator for Religiosity Dori-Michelle Beeler and Jojan L. Jonker 

26. Further Explorations of/in Daoist Embodiment Louis Komjathy 康思奇 

27. Spiritual Contraptions: Religious Experience and Psychiatrized Bodies in the Nineteenth Century Kyle Derkson 

28. The Thai Body: Understanding the Principles of Medicine, Physiology, and the Massage Tradition through Inscriptions, Texts, and the Material Culture of Wat Phō Saran Suebsantiwongse 

29. Religion, Body, Excreta Sarah Nahar 

30. The Future Body: Religious Approaches to Advanced Technological Body-Modifications Michael Caligiuri. 

Index