Bible and Visual Culture

Call For Papers: The Bible and Visual Culture unit is premised on recognising that some of the most engaging and creative interpretations of biblical texts, themes, and stories are found in visual media from antiquity to the present. Further encouragement to attend to visual interpretations of the Bible is offered by our awareness that such readings have often captured the collective and, especially, popular imagination to a far greater extent than have many written interpretations. In doing so, these visualisations have shaped and influenced our reading and understanding of the biblical texts. The section offers an academic space for the critical exploration and discussion of biblical texts, characters, motifs and themes as they are represented in visual media, including (but not limited to) painting, sculpture, print making, illustration, moving pictures (including film, television, and gaming), advertising, street art, and other expressions of visual culture. The section welcomes efforts to situate visual interpretations of the Bible within a wider hermeneutical context and explore how such interpretations challenge or support other non-visual readings of biblical texts. The nature of the subject explored in this section demands an openness to the insights of a range of different approaches and disciplines beyond biblical studies, including (but again, not limited to) art history, film, theatre, psychology, music, trauma studies, as well as studies in gender and postcolonialism.

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