Man, these North Americans work fast while we Aussies are tucked in our beds! Here’s David Morgan’s top 5-10 essential readings. I really should have included David’s Visual Piety in my list. Not only is it a seminal work on how visual imagery evangelises, theologises and culturalises, but it is also a great piece of writing. Many of us read David to learn how to write better.

Well, in addition to everything I’ve written, you mean?If so, I’d list them this way, though not in order of rank. Obviously, I write as an American historian…

Communication and Change in American Religious History, ed. Leonard Sweet. Eerdmans, 1993.

David Paul Nord, Faith in Print. Oxford Univ Press, 2004.

John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: The History of the Idea of Communication. Univ of Chicago Press, 1999.

Harry Stout, “Religion, Communication, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (October 1977): 510-41.

Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors. Indiana Univ Press, 2006.

Hoover, Clark, and Alters, Media, Home, and Family. Routledge, 2004.

Anthropology and Media, eds. Faye Ginsburg, et al.

Practicing Religion in the Media Age, ed. Hoover & Clark. Columbia Univ Press, 2002.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed., Verso, 1991.

Christopher Pinney, Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion Books, 2004.

Brilliant, thanks David. If you’re reading this, it’s your turn to “tag” one or two others - either by getting them to email you their top 5-10 favourites or to post them on their blog.

Lynn, author of From Angels to Aliens and co-editor of Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media emailed Adan with her top 5-10.

Well, it’s very nice to have made his list! I feel honored.

Here are a few I go back to all the time, and a new classic, in no particular order:

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge University Press, 1997 (first published in 1980).

I first read this book in the late 1980s and was completely stunned by its breadth and ambition. The book introduced me to the idea that Christianity as we know it today was fundamentally shaped by its negotiation with the “mass media” of the printing press in the 15th century. It traced how the press shaped (and developed within) modernity, the nation-state, and in relation to religion. It�s also the first book I ever read that had footnotes as interesting as the text itself (good thing, as there’s about four times as much text in the footnotes as in the book itself!).

Diane Winston, Red Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army. Harvard University Press, 1999.

This book win hands-down in the competition for sexiest title in the religion and media category. Not only that, but it’s well written and a compelling read on how a religious organization negotiated with media, and then became represented in fictional media, in ways that were beyond the organization’s ability to control. I loved that premise and it deeply shaped my own research and thinking in writing up From Angels to Aliens.

David Morgan and Sally Promey, The Visual Culture of American Religions. University of California Press, 2001.

This book helped me to broaden my understanding of media to include art, public space, and free expression in its many forms. I especially like chapters by David Morgan, Sally Promey, Paul Gutjahr, and Leigh Eric Schmidt, but it’s a book I find myself coming back to time and again. I also would love to read David Morgan’s Protestants and Pictures again, but alas, some doctoral student has borrowed it and has perhaps loved it even more than I did (since I haven’t seen it since).

Sean McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955-1993. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

This is a book that�s going to be a classic in this field. It’s an overarching review of how major U.S. news periodicals have covered religions on the margins since the mid-20th century. It’s eye-opening to see how often religious groups have been treated in relation to a specific journalistic frame (e.g., exotic, subversive, dangerous) and how this has left “blind spots” and reinforced prejudices about various religious groups and their activities. Its pinnacle is in the story of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, which McCloud argues removed the deference with which the press treated all religious groups and institutionalized a news frame of marginal/militant/dangerous that continues to shape news of religions on the fringe today (think Branch Davidians, saron gas scare in Tokyo, etc.). A real testament to the challenge of reporting on religion and on why things like the role of “moral values” in the 2004 Pres election continue to flummox journalists.

David Morgan, Visual Piety. University of California Press, 1998; R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture. Oxford University Press, 1994; and Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. Yale University Press, 1995.

These books really opened my eyes in terms of thinking about the intersection of the media and the commercial marketplace. My most recent book (which if I’m lucky might make a list like this someday!) was inspired in some ways by my reading of these books, as they made me more interested in drawing out the connections between media, religion, the advertising industry and development of commercial goods.

Purnima Mankekar, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Duke University Press, 1999.

This is an outlier in some ways, as she wasn’t limiting her analysis to religion and media per se. Yet Mankekar’s observations about the role of the serial Ramayan on Doordarshan’s national television in the consolidation of the Hindu Nationalist party is fascinating and insightful. This book, along with writings of Sunaina Marr Maira and Radhika Parameswaran, have made me want to better understand India and have fueled my appreciation for Salman Ahmad and bhangra music and their roles in the post-1947 issues of identity among Pakistanis and Indians in diaspora around the world.

In the popular nonfiction media/religion category, I’d nominate

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi. What an interesting way to do reader-response in context! I learned a lot from it, both about culture and about method, in an indirect yet powerful sort of way.

Books that I’m reading right now include:

Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors, Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere(Indiana U Press, 2006)

Hillary Warren, There’s Never Been a Show Like Veggie Tales! (AltaMira, 2005)

John Schmalzbauer, People of Faith: Religious Conviction in American Journalism and Higher Education (Cornell U Press, 2003).

I haven’t read all of David Nord’s Faith in Reading, but that is on my to-do list, as it too is a classic.

This really makes me want to set aside my transcript analyses and get back to some good solid reading!! Grad school is a glorious time for that, and I look forward to hearing more about what Paul reads as he makes his way through it!

Thanks, Lynn, for your contribution. Not quite sure if being surrounded by piles of books is what I’d consider a “glorious” time, but maybe one day I’ll look back on these days and think “Man, I really needed to get out more.”

And Lynn, if you’re reading this, it’s your turn to “tag” someone (or sometwo), to either email you or to post a list of their blog, if they have one.

Adan posted his top 5-10 list of essential reads on the comment to my last post, but I’m setting them up here so you don’t have to look for comments:

Hi, Paul. Am I ever surprised to read your invite. ok, here goes. I’m trying not to duplicate your excellent list, which makes the task more difficult.

Jesús Martín-Barbero (1987 original Spanish)(1993) “From Media To Mediation: Communication, Culture and Hegemony”. Sage.

Jesús Martín-Barbero and Germán Rey (1999) “Los Ejercicios del Ver”. Barcelona, Gedisa Editorial

The above two books provide a basis for engaging religioin and media culturally.

Mary E. Hess (2005) “Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can’t leave Behind.” Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

David Morgan (1998) “Visual Piety, A History and Theory of Popular Religiious Images.” Berkeley, University of California Press.

Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture, The Nature and Future of Creativity.” New York, Penguin Books.

The above title immediately above relates to religion insofar as freedom of expression and creation is essential to retelling of religious narratives.

I’d conclude with the film, by Alejandro Springall, (1999), “Santitos”. It explores Mexican material religious culture.

So, I’ll ask David Morgan and Lynn Schofield Clark.

Thanks, mate. Can’t wait to see what Lynn and David come up with.

Stephen read my article on “Why we should think about mass media?” and asked me to list my top 5-10 favourite books/articles on religion, media and culture.

I think it’d be a great idea to start a tag-blog on this topic. You know how it works: I offer my top 5-10 list and “tag” someone (through the trackback function) to do the same, who then posts on their blog their top 5-10, and tags someone else. I’ll try my best to track the tagging, and let all y’all know who’s posting their top 5-10 list.

So here’s my top list…

Stewart Hoover and Knut Lundby (1997). Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.
Jolyon Mitchell and Sophia Marriage (2003). Mediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Culture. London, T&T Clark.
Peter Horsfield, Mary E Hess and Adan Medrano (2004). Belief in Media: Cultural Perspectives on Media and Christianity. Aldershot, Ashgate.
Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark (2002). Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture. New York, Columbia University Press.

I consider these books kinda like yearbooks of the dominant research teams in the field of media, religion and culture. Each of these books offers a pretty good overview of the current state of research (in the year they were published) and point to the possible futures. Everything from religion and globalisation in Latin America to religious emails in Scandinavia can be found in there, somewhere.

Pierre Babin and Mercedes Iannone (1991). The New Era in Religious Communication. Minneapolis, Fortress Press.

When I first approached a lecturer eight years ago about the possibility of doing research in media and religion in my B.Theol. degree, I was given this book. I still use it. Babin draws on a diverse range of media theories to draw a picture of how (then) young people approach religion, and the challenge for religious educators and practitioners. A fresh Catholic perspective that includes a critical look at how the Church needs to let go of the Counter-Reformation.

Taisto Lehikoinen (2003). Religious Media Theory: Understanding Mediated Faith and Christian Applications to Modern Media. Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla University Press.

I picked this book up when I got to go to a conference in Jyvaskyla. It gives a great summary of the different approaches to mass media by the Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals, drawing both American and European examples (because you need a space shuttle to get to Oz/NZ from Finland, we fell of his radar).

Lynn Schofield Clark (2003). From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural. New York, Oxford Unviersity Press.

If you want to know how American teenagers use media to construct personal religious identities, both within and away from traditional institutions and communities of faith, read this book. Clark provides personal portraits of soem of the young people in her research, which makes for a less blah- academic read. You need to read this book if you want to know how TV became sacralised and religion marginalised in America.

Peter Horsfield (2002). The Mediated Spirit. Melbourne, Uniting Church in Australia. [CD-ROM]

Well, he’s my supervisor, and, well, bless him. He needs some encouragement. No, not at all. If it were a book it would be like a Brief History of Time, as it covers the role of media in shaping religion, its organisation and power over twenty-five centuries or so. Because it’s a CD-ROM, you don’t read, you surf it, so those centuries are easier to handle. Great insights into how writing and printing excluded women from the religious elite. An inspiring introduction and call to the church. He tells me he’s turning it into a book. Don’t buy it. He’ll no doubt have to suck all the fun that went into making the CD-ROM, including all the hypertext and pictures and stuff. I particularly like this one as my name is in there, somewhere, amidst all the thank-yous. You’re welcome.

Okay, now, who do I tag? Mary Hess and Adan Medrano - you guys are well read - would you oblige? Ping me, email me, or comment on this post if you accept, and I’ll let everyone see your top 5-10.