Professor of Religious Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, by special appointment, Hamilton College
Professor Rodriguez-Plate's research revolves around one main idea: Religion is about bodies, not beliefs. Our bodily senses (smell, taste, touch, hearing, looking) effect the ways humans are religious, while religious traditions create power and influence by altering the ways we perceive. At the heart of religious life are sensual, bodily encounters.
Rodriguez-Plate's studies and courses range from developments in cultural anthropology, art history, film studies, and evolutionary science, along with religious studies. Among his 14 books are "Blasphemy: Art that Offends" (2006), "A History of Religion in 5½ Objects" (2014), and "Religion and Film" (2nd ed, 2017). He is co-founder and managing editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, and serves on several editorial boards for journals and book series.
His essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Religion Dispatches, The Christian Century, Huffington Post, Killing the Buddha, America, and elsewhere.
For more information, please visit: www.sbrentplate.net
Experience
2008–present
Visiting Associate Professor, Hamilton College
2007–2008
Associate professor, Texas Christian University
2001–2007
Assistant Professor , Texas Christian University
Publications
2017
Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (2nd ed), Columbia University Press
2017
Religion in Museums. Co-edited with Crispin Paine, Gretchen Buggeln, Bloomsbury Academic
2014
A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects, Beacon Press
2007
The Religion and Film Reader. Co-edited with Jolyon Mitchell, Routledge
2006
Blasphemy: Art that Offends, Black Dog Press
2004
Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion Through the Arts, Routledge