Paper on archaeological field research in Tuscany, where various invasive and non-invasive investigations have been carried out since 2010 at the roman rural site of Molino San Vincenzo.

John Goldingay has recently written several short, popular level books. IVP Academic published his Do We Need the New Testament? (2015) and A Reader’s Guide to The Bible (2017). In both books Goldingay argues the Old Testament (or First Testament in Goldingay’s book) is the foundational for a proper understanding the New Testament. As he obs…[Read more]

Studies by the author in experimental archaeology have been dealing with the (re-)production of the ancient Roman meal “puls” since 2012. This porridge puls was mainly prepared with wheat and other grains and it can be considered as the ancient Roman “national dish” par excellence, according to literary evidence. Concerning the recipes, puls is…[Read more]

Users of contemporary media technology in religious settings often oscillate between immediacy in spiritual interaction and the increasing complexity and visibility of media technology as human artifacts. Drawing on approaches to mediation from philosophy and media theory, I examine Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in performing a d…[Read more]

This essay discusses anthropological approaches to the study of media interacting with contexts of ethnic and religious diversity. The main argument is that not only issues of access to and exclusion from public spheres are relevant for an understanding of media and pluralism. Background assumptions and ideologies about media technologies and…[Read more]

In this article I suggest that the rapidly growing interest in the intersection of linguistic anthropology and media needs to be accompanied by a deeper investigation of the mediality of language. Discussing Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in religious events revolving around the recitation of devotional poetry, this paper explores h…[Read more]

This review addresses recent work on media practices in situations of religious diversity. I hereby distinguish three approaches in this literature: the media politics of diversity, religious diversity and the public sphere, and the diversity of religious mediations. Whereas the first focuses on the control of representations of religious…[Read more]

An Honours course taught by me at Edinburgh in 2011

An Honours course taught by me at Edinburgh in 2009 and 2012

This paper argues that Jacques Derrida provides a compelling rebuttal to a secularism that seeks to exclude religion from the public sphere. Political theorists such as Mark Lilla claim that religion is a source of violence, and so they conclude that religion and politics should be strictly separated. In my reading, Derrida’s work entails that a…[Read more]

Part of a much larger study in the intellectual history of Sophocles (and Greek tragedy in general) in the 18th century, this chapter brings to light, for the first time, Jean Terrasson’s incisive and highly influential attempt to dismantle Christianising and Neo-Classicist interpretations of both Greek tragedy and Aristotle’s Poetics and to…[Read more]

A short note describing the difficulties that surround the definition of “art.”

Computational analysis of the potential historical professional networks inferred from surviving print impressions offers novel insight into the evolution of early modern artistic printmaking in Europe. This analysis traces a longue durée print production history that examines the changing ways in which different regional printmaking communities…[Read more]

These are catalogue entries for the following works: Francisco de Zurbaran, Veronica Veil, from the Sarah Blaffer Campbell Collection Ferdinand Bol, Portrait of Sir John Hebdon, from the Sarah Blaffer Campbell Collection

There is a significant debate in Origenian scholarship today about the allegory/typology distinction. Some scholars accept the demarcation between these two forms of nonliteral scriptural interpretation, whereas others reject it. In this paper I seek to determine whether, or to what extent, the allegory/typology distinction is valid for study of…[Read more]

Superheroes with Islamic backgrounds are nothing new, but their critical study is. The recently released Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Religion, and Representation proposes how best to deploy such analysis pedagogically, politically, pluralistically, pervasively, and persuasively. This roundtable considers the book’s contents through its political c…[Read more]

New scholarly books in religious studies defy easy labels and reflect the eagerness of publishers to widen academic discourse and to upset conventional wisdom in the name of new knowledge—in science, across genders, between faiths, and around the world.

Review of Edward J. Watts, Hypatia. The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher

This essay examines what the paradigm of ‘globalization’ can tell us about the Achaemenid Persian Empire (c. 550-330 BCE).

This essay examines what the paradigm of ‘globalization’ can tell us about the Achaemenid Persian Empire (c. 550-330 BCE).