Panel Discussion | Affecting Performances: The Media & Embodied Politics of Contemporary Christianity

Thursday, November 14, 2013
5–7 pm

In her recently published book, Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America, Jill Stevenson looks to biblical theme parks, Passion plays, Holy Land recreations, mega-churches, and creationist museums to examine the sensuous practices and performative genres that shape evangelical beliefs – and believers.  Tonight, in this forum with Anthony Petro, Stevenson discusses the interplay between religion and media and the role of embodied feelings in the creation of religious worlds.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

This event is free and open to the public. A photo ID is required to enter NYU buildings.

Anthony Petro received his Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in 2011, specializing in Religion in America and Women and Gender Studies. Before joining the Department of Religion at Boston University in 2012, he served as Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Religious Studies Program at New York University. His research and teaching interests include the study of modern Christianity, especially evangelicalism and Catholicism in the United States; the history of religion, medicine, and public health; and critical and feminist theories of religion. His current project, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion, investigates the history of American religious participation in the AIDS epidemic and its role in the promotion of a national moral discourse on sex. Professor Petro is co-chairing a five-year seminar for the American Academy of Religion on “Global Perspectives on Religion and HIV/AIDS.” In addition, he is developing a new project that traces the history of American religion and its impact on the professionalization of public health and medicine since the late nineteenth century.

Jill Stevenson is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture: Sensual Piety in Late Medieval York (Palgrave, 2010) and co-editor of Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces (Boydell and Brewer, 2012). Her most recent book is Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in 21st-Century America (University of Michigan Press, 2013). She is the Focus Group Representative for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)’s Religion and Theatre Focus Group, and served on ATHE’s 2011 and 2012 Conference Planning Committees. She sits on the board of several academic journals and chairs the Editorial Board of the journal Research On Medieval and Renaissance Drama. Jill also serves on the Executive Committee of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) and for three years co-organized working sessions for ASTR’s annual conference.

Co-sponsored by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; The Center for Religion and Media, with additional support from the Henry Luce Foundation

Video: Victor Bautista