Description
Book SynopsisExplores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. This book discusses religious functions of images and the tools that viewers use to interpret them.
Trade Review"The Sacred Gaze is of fundamental importance for the relations between images and religious belief, and is a major contribution to the burgeoning field of visual studies. Morgan's wide-ranging book moves from the contested status of images between cultures, to the history of current American attitudes towards them. A notable achievement." - David Freedberg, author of The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response"
Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction I. Questions and Definitions 1. Defining Visual Culture 2. Visual Practice and the Function of Images 3. The Covenant with Images II. Images Between Cultures 4. The Violence of Seeing: Idolatry and Iconoclasm 5. The Circulation of Images in Mission History III. The Social Life of Pictures 6. Engendering Vision: Absent Fathers and Women with Beards 7. National Icons: Bibles, Flags, and Jesus in American Civil Religion Conclusion Notes Select Bibliography Index
