Bloomsbury Religious Studies

Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music

We are eagerly anticipating the release of the first title in our exciting new series Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music, edited by Christopher Partridge (Lancaster University, UK) and Sara Cohen (University of Liverpool, UK). Sacred and Secular Musics, by Virinder S. Kalra, publishes in November in the UK, and January in the US.

How does the sacred/secular opposition explain itself in the context of musical production? This volume traces this binary as it frames Western Classical music and Indian Classical music in the 18th and 19th centuries, laying the ground for a contemporary exploration of what is ostensibly sacred music in South Asia. Offering a potent critique of musicological knowledge-making, Virinder S. Kalra explores examples of South Asian musics in various domains and traverses a new cartography of music in which the sacred and the secular overlap. 

Drawing on examples which include Qawwali, kirtan and popular devotional genres, Sacred and Secular Musics offers new empirical material, as well as new insights into conceptualising religion and music, and the ways in which music performs sacredness and secularity across the contested India-Pakistan border in the region of Punjab.

Peter Manual, Professor from the Music Department of the Graduate Center at City University, New York praises Kalra on the use of a 'remarkable abundance of original data on Sikh music, qawwali, and other genres in Pakistani and Indian Punjab' which results in 'astute interpretive perspectives on these understudied genres and regional dynamics'.

Look out for further forthcoming titles in the series including Christian Metal, by Marcus Moberg, and Religion in Hip Hop, edited by Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman.

'Metal, a genre suffused with Christian imagery albeit with a blasphemous twist, spawned its own renegade, Christian metal. Metalhead religious scholar Marcus Moberg presents a detailed and analytically elegant definitive account of this counter-movement, a worthy addition to metal studies.' Deena Weinstein, Professor, Department of Sociology, DePaul University, USA

'An invaluable guide to a thriving yet frequently misunderstood subgenre, Moberg's authoritative, insightful work on Christian metal is essential reading for metal scholars.' Jeremy Wallach, Associate Professor, Bowling Green State University, USA

Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the Terrain provides an important step in advancing and mapping this new field of Religion and Hip Hop Studies. The volume features 14 original contributions representative of this new terrain within three sections representing major thematic issues over the past two decades. The Preface is written by one of the most prolific and founding scholars of this area of study, Michael Eric Dyson, and the inclusion of and collaboration with Bernard 'Bun B' Freeman fosters a perspective internal to Hip Hop and encourages conversation between artists and academics.

For more information on this series, and our other titles, please take a look at our website here.

New books and series editors for Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies

Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies offers original reflections on theory and method in the study of religions, and demonstrates new approaches to the way religious traditions are studied and presented.

We are delighted to let you know that Steven Sutcliffe (Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion, University of Edinburgh, UK) and Craig Martin (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, St. Thomas Aquinas College, USA) have joined James Cox (Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK) as Series Editors.

Studies published under its auspices look to clarify the role and place of Religious Studies in the academy, with theoretical aspects underscored through their application to the actual study of religions, often in the form of frontier research.

This approach is demonstrated perfectly by the latest book to be published in the series: Redefining Shamanisms: Spiritualist Mediums and Other Traditional Shamans as Apprenticeship Outcomes by David Gordon-Wilson, in which the author seeks to redefine the way we see Spiritualism and shamanism in modern Western society. As an academic who has spent many years conducting field work in a Spiritualist church, attending weekly meetings and becoming recognised as a medium himself, David Gordon Wilson is uniquely qualified to consider his subject from both an engaged and scholarly point of view. 

Spiritualism and mediumship are often regarded as the product of lingering superstition in the Victorian era, and as having limited relevance in modern Anglo-American society. Scholarship to date, which has considered Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition, has focussed on analysing the phenomenon in terms of spirit possession only. This volume analyses the development of shamanism (communication with the spiritual world) as a concept within North American English-speaking scholarship, with particular focus on Mircea Eliade’s influential cross-cultural presentation of shamanism. By re-examining the work of Sergei Shirokogoroff, one of Eliade’s principal sources, the traditional Evenki shamanic apprenticeship is compared and identified with the newly-presented Spiritualist apprenticeship.

Gordon-Wilson demonstrates that Spiritualism is best understood as a traditional shamanism, as distinct from contemporary appropriations or neo-shamanisms. He argues that shamanism is the outcome of an apprenticeship in the management of psychic experiences, which follows the same pattern as that of the apprentice medium. In doing so, he offers fresh insights into the mechanisms that are key to sustaining mediumship as a social institution, and Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition.

Here’s what some of our reviewers had to say about the book:

‘This is a rare and valuable field study of Spiritualism, more so because its author is both a practicing medium and a fine scholar of religion. In addition, it is a truly comparative study that goes beyond description to make an innovative case for rethinking the category of 'shamanism' in light of a core emphasis on apprenticeship.’

Steven Engler, Associate Professor in the Humanities Department at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada

‘Based in a detailed account of contemporary Spiritualist practices, this is an enterprising study of mediumship in modern European society. The author boldly argues that learning how to be a working Spiritualist medium can be understood as a “western” instance of a cross-cultural institution of Shamanic apprenticeship. The book contains the fullest ethnography of Spiritualism in the UK yet published and will open a new chapter in studies of Spiritualism as well as generate fresh debate within comparative studies of possession and shamanism.’

Dr. Steven J. Sutcliffe, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion, University of Edinburgh, UK

As well as Redefining Shamanisms, we have recently published several other new titles in the Advances in Religious Studies series:

Community and Worldview among Paraiyars of South India: 'Lived' Religion by Anderson H M Jeremiah: A detailed ethnographic study of rural Paraiyar communities in South India, formerly known as Dalits, or Untouchables. These are a largely socially marginalised group living within a dynamic and complex social matrix dominated by the caste system and its social and religious implications in India. Through examining Paraiyar Christian communities, Anderson H. M. Jeremiah provides a comprehensive understanding of their religious worldview within the dominant Hindu religious worldview. In arguing that Paraiyars express their beliefs through ‘lived’ religion, Jeremiah demonstrates that it is within local and specific contexts, as opposed to essentialised notions, that ‘religion’ either makes sense or that theories concerning it can be tested.

Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology by Julian Droogan: By drawing on the field of archaeological theory and method, this volume explores the relationship between religion and material culture. It is argued that the material elements of religious life have been largely neglected by the discipline of religious studies, while at the same time religion has been traditionally seen as problematic for archaeologists. Why do we not talk of the discipline of the archaeology of religion, in the same way we do the anthropology of religion, or the sociology of religion? The volume bridges the methodological gap between religious studies and archaeology by proposing a new way of understanding the materiality of religion – as active, engaged and projecting a level of autonomous social agency.

These are all fitting additions to our groundbreaking and diverse monograph series. To see what other titles are available as part of Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies, take a look at our website.

Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought

Kara here, marketing manager for our Religious Studies list in our New York office. A couple weeks ago I learned that we would be publishing a new series called Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought. I was really excited to see that, with the guidance of two well-respected series editors, we will be moving our list into new territory and hopefully breaking new ground with the scholarship that comes out of the series.

Series description:

Suspensions interrupts standardized discourses involving the Islamicate world by introducing creative and emerging ideas. The incisive works included in this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of vast experiential typologies -- such as violence, mourning, vulnerability, tension, and humor -- in light of contemporary Islamicate thought.

The first title in the series, The Writing of Violence in the Contemporary Islamicate World by Jason Mohaghegh, is set to publish in January 2012 in the UK and March 2012 in the US. Keep a look out for these books. We’ll certainly be showcasing the series at the American Academy of Religion conference in the US.

Cheers.