New Book session: The Routledge Handbook on Religion and the Body

This panel will present their contributions to The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body (2023) which investigates the body in religious studies, theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and cultural and gender studies. This handbook continues the innovative scholarship featured annually at the American Academy of Religion Unit on the Body and Religion, the publication of the Body and Religion Journal, and other venues dedicated to this flourishing subfield in religious studies. The volume addresses and elucidates the body as a central category of analysis in studying local and global religious phenomena and contexts and represents the body as integral to concepts of self and others. Our authors employ multidisciplinary approaches, theorizing and illustrating notions of the body and embodiment as these intersect with different categories and areas of study, such as theology, material culture, ritual studies, gender, sexuality, healing, and technology.  The scholars in this handbook underscore embodied forms of religious experience and the body’s agency in religious life, belief, and practice cross-culturally.