Myth “Today”: Reading Religion Into Research on Mediated Cultural Politics

Authors

  • Stewart M. Hoover Department of Media Studies University of Colorado Boulder

Keywords:

media, religion, politics, Trump, visual communication, myth, imaginaries

Abstract

The events in Lafayette Square in Washington on June 1, 2020, in which President Trump displayed a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, constitutes a heuristic lens through which to explore the potential of serious scholarship on religion. Culturalist Media Studies, as a field, has traditionally ignored religion and it now does so at its peril, leaving it increasingly unable to account for the emergent political formations of the post-Brexit era. June 1 provided a rich tapestry of visual, iconic, symbolic, discursive, and agonistic formations through which to explore how religion, media, and culture are present in complex and layered ways and that careful scholarship can deepen knowledge and understanding about contemporary social and cultural life.

Author Biography

Stewart M. Hoover, Department of Media Studies University of Colorado Boulder

Professor of Media Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he directs the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture.  He is an internationally-recognized expert on media and religion.  He is author co-author or editor of ten books, including Media, Home, and Family, and Religion in the Media Age, and Does God Make the Man: Media, Religion, and the Crisis of Masculinity, co-authored with Curtis Coats, and the edited volume, The Media and Religious Authority.

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Published

2020-08-14

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Features

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