Reconnecting Language and Materiality in Christian Reading

A Comparative Analysis of Two Groups of Protestant Women

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2109232
AutoresBritt Halvorson (0000-0003-1114-4280, Colby College, autor de correspondencia), Ingie Hovland (0000-0002-2926-6326, University of Georgia)
Año2021
Volumen63
Número2
Páginas499-529
Fecha de publicación2021-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417521000128
OpenAlexW3146583365
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas38

What do Christians do when they read? How can Christian reading be understood anthropologically? Anthropologists of Christianity have offered many ethnographic descriptions of the interplay among people, words, and material objects across Christian groups, but descriptions of Christian reading have often posited an androgynous reader. In response to this we begin from the observation that while reading cannot be done without words, it also cannot be done without a body. We propose that an analytic approach of placing language and materiality (including bodies) together will help clarify that reading texts is an embodied practice, while not undermining the importance of working with words. We draw inspiration from the recent interest in bringing linguistic anthropology and materiality studies together into the same analytic frame of 'language materiality.' We explore a language-materiality approach to reading by comparing how the biblical story of Mary and Martha was read by Protestant women in two historical situations: 1920s Norway and the 1950s United States. We argue that in these cases the readers' gendered, raced, and classed bodies were central to the activity of reading texts, including their bodies' material engagements with the world, such as carrying out women's work. We suggest that paying attention to embodied reading-that is, readers' social entanglements with both language and materiality-yields a fuller analysis of what reading is in particular historical situations, and ultimately questions the notion of a singular Protestant semiotic ideology that works consistently toward purification

Aesthetics · Art · Christianity · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Ethnography · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Materiality (auditing · Politics · Protestantism · Reading (process · Sociology · Anthropology · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Philosophy · Religious studies · Rhetoric and Communication Studies