Bodies in society : essays on Christianity in contemporary culture / Margaret R. Miles.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miles, Margaret R. (Margaret Ruth), 1937-

Contributor:

Phi Beta Kappa Library Trust Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Human body.

Christianity and culture.

Physical Description:

xiv, 227 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Eugene, Or. : Cascade Books, [2008]

Summary:

Education is About Learning to Think. Much of what we call thinking, however, is a hodge-podge of repetitious self-talk, opinion, and cutting and pasting of secondhand ideas. Moreover, thinking in the present has often been alien to scholars who were tempted to think abstractly. But life and thought belong together and require each other, as Plotinus pointed out many centuries ago: "[T]he object of contemplation is living and life, and the two together are one" (Ennead 3.8.8). Presently, many women and men in the academic world are thinking concretely within the context of their own lives and with acknowledged accountability to broader communities with whom they think and to whom they are answerable. The essays in this volume consider Christianity as an aspect of North American culture, bringing the critical tools of the academy to thinking about some of the perplexing and pressing problems of contemporary public life. Three interactive and interdependent themes traverse these essays: gender, the effects of media culture, and institutions. Each of these themes has been central to Margaret Miles's work for thirty years. Each understands corporeality as fundamental both to subjectivity and society. Miles finds that Christianity, critically appropriated, provides ideas and methods for thinking concretely about life in North American society.

Contents:

The pursuit of lifefulness: in search of a method

Revisioning an embodied Christianity

Violence against women in the historical Christian West and in North American secular culture: the visual and textual evidence

Textual harassment: desire and the female body

Celibacy as sexual orientation

Religion and food: the case of eating disorders

Voyeurism and visual images of violence

Religion and values in contemporary North American popular film

Film talk: an approach to moviegoing

Larry Flynt in real life

What you see is what you get: religion in prime time fiction television

Fashioning the self

Disney spirituality: an oxymoron?

Bonhoeffer (the film) and Bonhoeffer (the theologian)

The passion for social justice and The passion of the Christ

Love in a culture of fear

Pilgrimage as metaphor in a nuclear age

Imitation of Christ: is it possible in the twentieth century?

Hermeneutics of generosity and suspicion: pluralism and theological education

Theory, theology, and Episcopal churchwomen

From the garden to the academy: blame, battle, or a better way? Exploring sex and power in the academy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-227).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Phi Beta Kappa Library Trust Fund.

ISBN:

9781556354212

1556354215

OCLC:

259189990