Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate recently edited Film and Religion, a four-volume reference work for Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies series. The collection comprises previously published work from the past two decades. As well as cinema studies and religious studies, other topics covered include anthropology, communication studies, history, political science, literature, biblical studies and philosophy.
With over 1200 pages of text, the volumes cover a range of subjects such as cinema’s relationship to myth, ritual, and sacred space; the ways filmmaking has been understood as a religious practice; how fans of cult films form new communal structures; and the ways films have been used by religious groups in missionary work.
The chapters cover films from around the world, from a variety of religious traditions and a variety of genres, and the ways cinema and religion mix with politics, economics, colonialism, theology and more.
Plate offered a lengthy general introduction and introductions to each of the volumes.
