Book reviews from the Bulletin and other Equinox religious studies journals
- Lewis, A. David and Martin Lund, eds. Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 256. $24.93 (paperback). by Aaron Ricker Lewis and Lund’s book is literally one of a kind, which is saying something given the exponentially productive academic field of comics and religion. I was accordingly impressed by the generous research shared by Lewis and Lund in their “Introduction,” and convinced that books like theirs are necessary given the ignorance and hostility that often ...Find Out More →
- Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. By Emily Ogden. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 268. $27.50 (paperback), $82.50 (hardcover). by Charles McCrary It can be a terribly tenuous thing, being modern. It slips. To be a secular liberal subject, a choosing agent, a person in control of faculties and wits, requires diligence. But if you’re ever unsure of your own enlightenment, it can be reassuring to find someone unenlightened. Even Benjamin Franklin, a healthy, wealthy, wise man—in ...Find Out More →
- Heavenly Bodies: Incarnation, the Gaze, and Embodiment in Christian Theology by O. Sigurdson (2016), Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 683pp. Adam Pryor Reviewed by Adam Pryor Affiliation Bethany College, USA. email: [email protected] Keywords embodiment; Christian theology; incarnation; phenomenology; Christology; Bakhtin There are few texts written in Christian theology today that demonstrate the ambition of Ola Sigurdson’s work. At times breathtaking and at others overwhelming in its sheer size and density, Sigurdson has attempted to develop a constructive theological somatology in roughly three ...Find Out More →
- Mullen, Lincoln A. The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 384. $39.95 (hardcover). by Charlie McCrary These days, Americans choose their religions. Even those who seem to start with a religion, those “raised religious,” must choose to continue to be religious, or to switch religions, or to cease to be religious, maybe become “spiritual” instead, or adopt the label “atheist” or “freethinker” or “agnostic.” Pick one. This imperative, Lincoln ...Find Out More →
- Altman, Michael. Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721–1893. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xxii+175. $34.95 (hardcover). Reviewed by Andrew Kunze Michael Altman’s Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu turns a critical eye toward history of Hinduism in America and the nationalist, orientalist discourses of formative debates, from the Colonial era up to Chicago’s World Parliament, in order to revise the standard “Transcendentalist-Theosophist-Vivekananda-1965” trajectory (xvii). Taking a genealogical approach to his historical sources, Altman shows how ‘hazy notions’ ...Find Out More →
- Inge, Anabel. 2016. The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman: Paths to Conversion. New York: Oxford University Press. xiii + 303pp. £22.99. ISBN: 9780190611677 (pbk) (e-book also available). Reviewed by: Jennifer Philippa Eggert, University of Warwick. [email protected] Keywords: Islam; women in religion; Muslims in the UK; Salafism; conversion. The topics of women in Islam and Salafism in Europe have garnered considerable attention from researchers, journalists, policy-makers and the wider public recently. Anabel Inge’s book The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman, which analyses UK-based Salafi Muslim women’s everyday experiences and is based on ...Find Out More →
