Medieval scholars and cultural historians have recently turned their attention to the question of "smells" and what olfactory sensations reveal about society in general and holiness in particular. Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam contributes to that conversation, explaining how early Christians and Muslims linked the "sweet smell of sanctity" with ideals of the body and sexuality; created boundaries and sacred space; and imagined their emerging communal identity. Most importantly, scent--itself transgressive and difficult to control--signaled transition and transformation between...

Given that women and girls carry the heaviest burdens of the African HIV pandemic, their lived experiences should be the starting point for any pedagogy of prevention. In light of this claim, Risky Marriage: HIV and Intimate Relationships in Tanzania uses qualitative fieldwork with HIV positive women living in Mwanza, Tanzania to ask why marriage is an HIV risk factor. By beginning with women's experience as a hermeneutical lens, this book seeks to establish a creative space where African women can imagine new alternatives to HIV prevention that would promote human flourishing and abundant...

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through choreographic incorporation of Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of dancers. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of...

Focusing on the early medieval herbal recipes found in the Lingbao Wufuxu (The Preface to the Five Lingbao Talismans of Numinous Treasure), this study analyses Daoist asceticism and ideas regarding the body, health, grain avoidance diets, the Three Worms, and immortality.

Incarnation has always been an important concept within Christian theology. For centuries theologians have wrestled with how best to conceptualize the vexing problem of what it means that Jesus the Christ is fully God and fully human. In this book, Adam Pryor explores how the incarnation has intersected corresponding issues well beyond the familiar question of how any one person might have two natures. Beginning by identifying four critical themes that have historically shaped the development of this doctrine, Pryor goes on to offer a constructive account of the incarnation. His account seeks...

Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the human senses (smell, touch, taste, hearing, smell, and proprioception) through the lenses of practical theology and pastoral care. It focuses on each of the senses independently and through specific religious practices.

Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the human senses (smell, touch, taste, hearing, smell, and proprioception) through the lenses of practical theology and pastoral care. It focuses on each of the senses independently and through specific religious practices.

This book examines the broad significance of the current trends in technology (AI/robots) against the long history of the human imagination of making sentient beings. It seeks to enrich our understanding of the present as it is trending into the future against the richly relevant and surprisingly long past.