Adrian Ivakhiv
Biographic Data
| ID | 655008 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adrian Ivakhiv |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adrian |
| FAMILY NAME | Ivakhiv |
| SIGNATURE | IVAKHIV A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vermont |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Becoming Tuteishyi
This essay draws on earlier research concerning Ukraine’s northwestern borderlands to articulate a conception of the tuteishyi (one who is “from here”) that resonates with the recent experience of Ukrainians who have been defending their homeland—a domain of blue and yellow; of sunflowers and grain fields; and with a history that is very different from that of its imperial-minded neighbour Russia—from invaders who seek to conquer and suppress its…
The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies
The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies gathers leading work by critical scholars in this burgeoning field. Redressing the lack of environmental perspectives in the study of media, ecomedia studies asserts that media are in and about the environment, and environments are socially and materially mediated. \n \nThe book gives form to this new area of study and brings together diverse scholarly contributions to explore and give definition to the …
Reimagining Religious Imagination, in Theory and in Practice
Jack Miles, Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020). T.M. Luhrmann, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). David Morgan, Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World (New York: Columbia University Press, …
Is the Postin Posthuman the Postin Postmodern? Or, What Can the Human
Image Ecologies, Spiritual Polytropy, and the Anthropocene
This article advances a four-fold contribution to theorizing the relationship between images, religion, and the Anthropocene. First, it proposes a ‘process-semiotic’ definition of the image as a sensorially perceptible form that mediates agential relations both between humans and between humans and the larger world. Second, it argues for a conception of religion and of spirituality that sees the world as varying on a scale between the ‘polytropic…
Pagan(ish) Senses and Sensibilities
An academic biography serves as an opportune moment for thinking about how one's research in Pagan studies fits the larger patterns of one's research and life trajectory. In this (auto)biographer's case, it informs a debate over whether Paganism is or ought to be a religion among other religions, or a set of sensibilities -- including sensorial engagements, individual and collective, with a common material world. I argue that the latter should ha…
One Must Not Forget This Diplomatic Negotiation
"One Must Not Forget This Diplomatic Negotiation" Adrian Ivakhiv (bio) Interviewer: "One has the impression that the game is over from the start; why would they come to help you in your work? The contributors must be saying to themselves, 'He just has to do the job himself, and then publish the results.'" Latour: "You are being hard on me, but you are applying pressure where it hurts. ... aime really has the ambition of using everything that phil…
New Wine into Old Bottles? Or Time to Jettison the Bottle
Teaching Ecocriticism and Cinema
Teaching Ecocriticism and Cinema
In her introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader , Cheryll Glotfelty (1996) suggested that the history of ecocriticism be considered in terms analogous to Elaine Showalter’s three stages in the development of feminist criticism. First, in this scenario, comes the examination of ‘images of nature’ (or of women, in Showalter’s account). Next comes the ‘literary tradition’ stage, which, for ecocritics, involves uncovering and revalorising the traditio…
Cinema of the Not-Yet
Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s writings on utopia, Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, and the ‘affective turn’ in social theory, I argue that cinema is by its nature heterotopic: it creates worlds that are other than the ‘real world’ but that relate to that world in multiple and contradictory ways. The landscapes and people portrayed in ?lm are affectively charged in ways that alter viewers’ relationship to the real objects denoted or signi?ed by…
Opening Pandora's Film
By metaphorically taking on the themes of imperialism and the suppression of indigenous peoples, by implicitly criticizing industrial capitalism with its voracious appetite for natural resources, while also participating in it, by linking militarism with ecocide while finding hope only in redemptive violence, and by presenting a religious worldview at variance with that of billions of people, the film Avatar has generated great controversy. Only …
Nature's Nation
In his recurrent examination of what makes Americans “American,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has particularly focused on the twin themes of democracy and improvisation. The National Parks: America's Best Idea links the national park ideal with America's “democratic spirit.” Through an examination of its visual methods, I argue that the “Ken Burns gaze” is more consistent with the contemplative and magisterial visuality that shaped the origins…
From Frames to Resonance Machines
George Lakoff 's work in cognitive linguistics has prompted a surge in social scientists’ interest in the cognitive and neuropsychological dimensions of political discourse. Bringing cognitive neuroscience into the study of social movements and of environmental communication, however, is not as straightforward as Lakoff 's followers suggest. Examining and comparing Lakoff's “neuropolitics” with those of political theorist William E. Connolly, thi…
Social Nature
Noel Castree, Nature (Key Ideas in Geography; London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 312 pp., $38.95, ISBN: 9780415339056. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 320 pp., $43.95, ISBN 13: 9780199256044. John Law, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 200, $54.95, ISBN: 978-0-415-34175-2
Colouring Cape Breton “Celtic”
This article rethinks the relationship between cultural identity and landscape by way of a post-constructivist, “multicultural political ecological” examination of Cape Breton Island’s Celtic Colours International Festival . The author reads the festival as an intervention on several levels: as part of a set of contests and contrasts by which Cape Bretoners articulate their identities and heritages; as a medium by which Celticity is defined and s…
Religion, Nature and Culture
The inaugural conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture demonstrated several tensions at play within the emerging field of ‘religion, nature and culture’. Each of these three terms is a modern western folk construct, not a universal category. The place of ‘culture’ within this trinity is especially unclear, and its use risks essentializing a category that cultural anthropologists have themselves begun t…
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
Paganism is frequently cast by Anglo-American scholars as a form of “nature religion.” Some have also identified its political leanings as left rather than right. This article tests these preconceptions against the evidence provided by East European, especially Ukrainian, Paganism or “Native Faith.” The author examines Native Faith notions of nature as land, as “blood,” and as “tradition,” and argues that these are underpinned by a concept of “te…
"Toward a Geography of "Religion
Recent religious studies scholarship has examined the historical and cultural variability by which "religion" and "the sacred" have been constructed by scholars and by the public. This article argues that geographers of religion must take these deconstructive arguments to heart. Rather than assuming there is a universal feature of human life called "religion," the author argues that the religious and the sacred should be studied by geographers as…
In Search of Deeper Identities Neopaganism and "Native Faith" in Contemporary Ukraine
This article examines the growth of Neopaganism and Native Faith in post-Soviet Ukraine. It traces the historical development of Neopagan ideas and contextualizes their emergence within the cultic milieus of alternative religion and ethnic nationalism. It surveys the main contemporary Ukrainian Neopagan and Native Faith groups and movements, assessing their future growth possibilities and comparing them with more familiar forms of Western Neopaga…
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
Orchestrating Sacred Space
.
Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage
Several scholars have argued that New Age spirituality is best understood as a form of 'self-spirituality' and as an expression of the consumer capitalist tendency to commodify all things, in the process converting religion into a 'spiritual marketplace'. This article examines the phenomenon of New Age pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to natural 'power places', with a focus on New Age practices at Sedona, Arizona, USA. The author assesses New Ag…
Toward a Multicultural Ecology
The debate between realists and constructivists has polarized environmental scholarship in recent years. Situating this debate within the longstanding modernist tradition of categorically distinguishing "nature" from "culture," and the natural sciences from the social sciences and humanities, this article suggests that we need to find a non-dualistic space for rethinking cultural-ecological relations. Such a space has been articulated by actor-ne…
Claiming sacred ground
In this account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England, and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places i…
"Toward a Geography of "Religion
Recent religious studies scholarship has examined the historical and cultural variability by which "religion" and "the sacred" have been constructed by scholars and by the public. This article argues that geographers of religion must take these deconstructive arguments to heart. Rather than assuming there is a universal feature of human life called "religion," the author argues that the religious and the sacred should be studied by geographers as…
Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage
Several scholars have argued that New Age spirituality is best understood as a form of 'self-spirituality' and as an expression of the consumer capitalist tendency to commodify all things, in the process converting religion into a 'spiritual marketplace'. This article examines the phenomenon of New Age pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to natural 'power places', with a focus on New Age practices at Sedona, Arizona, USA. The author assesses New Ag…
Toward a Multicultural Ecology
The debate between realists and constructivists has polarized environmental scholarship in recent years. Situating this debate within the longstanding modernist tradition of categorically distinguishing "nature" from "culture," and the natural sciences from the social sciences and humanities, this article suggests that we need to find a non-dualistic space for rethinking cultural-ecological relations. Such a space has been articulated by actor-ne…
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
Cinema of the Not-Yet
Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s writings on utopia, Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, and the ‘affective turn’ in social theory, I argue that cinema is by its nature heterotopic: it creates worlds that are other than the ‘real world’ but that relate to that world in multiple and contradictory ways. The landscapes and people portrayed in ?lm are affectively charged in ways that alter viewers’ relationship to the real objects denoted or signi?ed by…
Opening Pandora's Film
By metaphorically taking on the themes of imperialism and the suppression of indigenous peoples, by implicitly criticizing industrial capitalism with its voracious appetite for natural resources, while also participating in it, by linking militarism with ecocide while finding hope only in redemptive violence, and by presenting a religious worldview at variance with that of billions of people, the film Avatar has generated great controversy. Only …
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
Paganism is frequently cast by Anglo-American scholars as a form of “nature religion.” Some have also identified its political leanings as left rather than right. This article tests these preconceptions against the evidence provided by East European, especially Ukrainian, Paganism or “Native Faith.” The author examines Native Faith notions of nature as land, as “blood,” and as “tradition,” and argues that these are underpinned by a concept of “te…
Red Rocks, “Vortexes” and the Selling of Sedona
La spiritualite du Nouvel Age et le mouvement environnemental moderne trouvent tous les deux leurs racines historiques dans la culture des jeunes des annees 1960. Cet article examine une des expressions de ce mouvement large du Nouvel Age, une communaute de praticiens d'une spiritualite metaphysique et alternative situee a Sedona dans l'Arizona, et tente de montrer comment les preoccupations environnementales et la spiritualite du Nouvel Age se s…
Claiming sacred ground
In this account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England, and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places i…
Toward a Multicultural Ecology
The debate between realists and constructivists has polarized environmental scholarship in recent years. Situating this debate within the longstanding modernist tradition of categorically distinguishing "nature" from "culture," and the natural sciences from the social sciences and humanities, this article suggests that we need to find a non-dualistic space for rethinking cultural-ecological relations. Such a space has been articulated by actor-ne…
Orchestrating Sacred Space
.
Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage
Several scholars have argued that New Age spirituality is best understood as a form of 'self-spirituality' and as an expression of the consumer capitalist tendency to commodify all things, in the process converting religion into a 'spiritual marketplace'. This article examines the phenomenon of New Age pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to natural 'power places', with a focus on New Age practices at Sedona, Arizona, USA. The author assesses New Ag…
In Search of Deeper Identities Neopaganism and "Native Faith" in Contemporary Ukraine
This article examines the growth of Neopaganism and Native Faith in post-Soviet Ukraine. It traces the historical development of Neopagan ideas and contextualizes their emergence within the cultic milieus of alternative religion and ethnic nationalism. It surveys the main contemporary Ukrainian Neopagan and Native Faith groups and movements, assessing their future growth possibilities and comparing them with more familiar forms of Western Neopaga…
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
"Toward a Geography of "Religion
Recent religious studies scholarship has examined the historical and cultural variability by which "religion" and "the sacred" have been constructed by scholars and by the public. This article argues that geographers of religion must take these deconstructive arguments to heart. Rather than assuming there is a universal feature of human life called "religion," the author argues that the religious and the sacred should be studied by geographers as…
Colouring Cape Breton “Celtic”
This article rethinks the relationship between cultural identity and landscape by way of a post-constructivist, “multicultural political ecological” examination of Cape Breton Island’s Celtic Colours International Festival . The author reads the festival as an intervention on several levels: as part of a set of contests and contrasts by which Cape Bretoners articulate their identities and heritages; as a medium by which Celticity is defined and s…
Religion, Nature and Culture
The inaugural conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture demonstrated several tensions at play within the emerging field of ‘religion, nature and culture’. Each of these three terms is a modern western folk construct, not a universal category. The place of ‘culture’ within this trinity is especially unclear, and its use risks essentializing a category that cultural anthropologists have themselves begun t…
Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism
Paganism is frequently cast by Anglo-American scholars as a form of “nature religion.” Some have also identified its political leanings as left rather than right. This article tests these preconceptions against the evidence provided by East European, especially Ukrainian, Paganism or “Native Faith.” The author examines Native Faith notions of nature as land, as “blood,” and as “tradition,” and argues that these are underpinned by a concept of “te…
Social Nature
Noel Castree, Nature (Key Ideas in Geography; London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 312 pp., $38.95, ISBN: 9780415339056. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 320 pp., $43.95, ISBN 13: 9780199256044. John Law, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 200, $54.95, ISBN: 978-0-415-34175-2
Nature's Nation
In his recurrent examination of what makes Americans “American,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has particularly focused on the twin themes of democracy and improvisation. The National Parks: America's Best Idea links the national park ideal with America's “democratic spirit.” Through an examination of its visual methods, I argue that the “Ken Burns gaze” is more consistent with the contemplative and magisterial visuality that shaped the origins…
From Frames to Resonance Machines
George Lakoff 's work in cognitive linguistics has prompted a surge in social scientists’ interest in the cognitive and neuropsychological dimensions of political discourse. Bringing cognitive neuroscience into the study of social movements and of environmental communication, however, is not as straightforward as Lakoff 's followers suggest. Examining and comparing Lakoff's “neuropolitics” with those of political theorist William E. Connolly, thi…
Cinema of the Not-Yet
Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s writings on utopia, Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, and the ‘affective turn’ in social theory, I argue that cinema is by its nature heterotopic: it creates worlds that are other than the ‘real world’ but that relate to that world in multiple and contradictory ways. The landscapes and people portrayed in ?lm are affectively charged in ways that alter viewers’ relationship to the real objects denoted or signi?ed by…
Opening Pandora's Film
By metaphorically taking on the themes of imperialism and the suppression of indigenous peoples, by implicitly criticizing industrial capitalism with its voracious appetite for natural resources, while also participating in it, by linking militarism with ecocide while finding hope only in redemptive violence, and by presenting a religious worldview at variance with that of billions of people, the film Avatar has generated great controversy. Only …
Teaching Ecocriticism and Cinema
In her introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader , Cheryll Glotfelty (1996) suggested that the history of ecocriticism be considered in terms analogous to Elaine Showalter’s three stages in the development of feminist criticism. First, in this scenario, comes the examination of ‘images of nature’ (or of women, in Showalter’s account). Next comes the ‘literary tradition’ stage, which, for ecocritics, involves uncovering and revalorising the traditio…
Teaching Ecocriticism and Cinema
New Wine into Old Bottles? Or Time to Jettison the Bottle
Pagan(ish) Senses and Sensibilities
An academic biography serves as an opportune moment for thinking about how one's research in Pagan studies fits the larger patterns of one's research and life trajectory. In this (auto)biographer's case, it informs a debate over whether Paganism is or ought to be a religion among other religions, or a set of sensibilities -- including sensorial engagements, individual and collective, with a common material world. I argue that the latter should ha…
One Must Not Forget This Diplomatic Negotiation
"One Must Not Forget This Diplomatic Negotiation" Adrian Ivakhiv (bio) Interviewer: "One has the impression that the game is over from the start; why would they come to help you in your work? The contributors must be saying to themselves, 'He just has to do the job himself, and then publish the results.'" Latour: "You are being hard on me, but you are applying pressure where it hurts. ... aime really has the ambition of using everything that phil…
Is the Postin Posthuman the Postin Postmodern? Or, What Can the Human
Image Ecologies, Spiritual Polytropy, and the Anthropocene
This article advances a four-fold contribution to theorizing the relationship between images, religion, and the Anthropocene. First, it proposes a ‘process-semiotic’ definition of the image as a sensorially perceptible form that mediates agential relations both between humans and between humans and the larger world. Second, it argues for a conception of religion and of spirituality that sees the world as varying on a scale between the ‘polytropic…
Reimagining Religious Imagination, in Theory and in Practice
Jack Miles, Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020). T.M. Luhrmann, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). David Morgan, Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World (New York: Columbia University Press, …
The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies
The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies gathers leading work by critical scholars in this burgeoning field. Redressing the lack of environmental perspectives in the study of media, ecomedia studies asserts that media are in and about the environment, and environments are socially and materially mediated. \n \nThe book gives form to this new area of study and brings together diverse scholarly contributions to explore and give definition to the …
Sociology (18 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Art (11 works) · History (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Religious Tourism and Spaces (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works)