Online Lightening Talks
Anatomy, Flesh, and Resurrection: Sculptures of the Supine Dead Christ in Counter-Reformation Spain
Virtual Lightning Talk Ilenia Colon Mendoza
The University of Valladolid was the first Castilian institution where anatomy was taught from human dissection. In 1551 Bernardino Montaña de Monserrate published in Valladolid, Spain El Libro de la anathomia del hombre, the first book in Spanish to address the subject. By the time of its publication the theories of the book were outdated but the illustrated plates were copies of the images found in Vesalius’ influential De humanis corporis fabrica. Like Montaña Juan Valverde and Dionisio Daza Chacón also published in Spanish their respective books: Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (Rome, 1556) and Práctica y teorica de la chirugía (Valladolid, 1580). The anatomical accuracy of the seventeenth-century Cristos yacentes by Gregorio Fernández and Francisco Fermín relied on these Spanish anatomical treatises because they would have been more accessible to artists in their native city of Valladolid. It was through the use of these publications that the body of Christ was accurately rendered as a dead body that would later resurrect. The Catholic belief in the resurrection of the flesh ties directly to its anatomical representation. The focus on Christ’s physical suffering connects to the Eucharistic meaning of the work and Counter-Reformation devotional practices. The lacerated body of Christ with its wounds are noted by contemporary mystics as windows to paradise that serve to elevate the viewer to higher state of empathetic contemplation. Scientific anatomical representation was used in service of the Church to produce a work that used verisimilitude and hyperreality to engage the viewer.
The Way: The Spiritual Practices of Jesus
Virtual Lightning Talk Charles Neff
Early Christians referred to their fledgling religious tradition as "The Way." Using primary and secondary sources from Late Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, the author has endeavored to reconstruct the spiritual practices of Jesus that may have constituted the The Way for his earliest followers. The author examined Biblical and extra-biblical texts to search for continuance, divergence, discontinuance, and new development of spiritual practices from Judaism to Christianity. The research revealed that Jesus engaged in the traditional Jewish practices of prayer, hospitality, Sabbath observance, pilgrimage, Temple and synagogue worship, and festival observance. The research also revealed that Jesus engaged in asceticism, solitude, feasting (not fasting), and open table fellowship. In terms of spiritual practice, "The Way" for the earliest Christians likely included these elements.
Mimesis: The Scapegoating Function of Christianity
Virtual Lightning Talk Ogechi Ibeanusi
In my poster, I will discuss Rene Girard’s theory of mimesis and the scapegoating function of Christianity. In Girard’s theory of religion and culture, he offers what he calls to be the science of humanity that can answer the questions surrounding the origins of culture and religion. The components that comprise of these theories are mimetic desire and violence, the second being the scapegoat, the third is religious awe, and finally the Bible and the revelation of Jesus Christ. Girard differentiates mimetic desire with imitation in that imitation is copying while mimetic desire functions as a triangle with subject, object, and mediator. Furthermore, violence is added because mimetic desire unlike imitation later leads to rivalry over object desire. Thus, the mediator becomes both the model and obstacle and mimetic desire intensifies rivalries, which Girard believes early modern societies experienced paroxyms. This explains the situation in which human beings revert to the Freudian death instinct, which eventually leads to a single victim or outsider on the margins, whom the community thrusts their bane upon and blames for the problems apparent in all members of the community (otherwise known as the scapegoat.) After the scapegoat has been sacrificed, the community begins to experience greater peace and deifies the scapegoat as a god. The act of killing the scapegoat becomes holy and is at the center of Christ’s cruxification on the cross and Christian-Judeo culture.
The Symbolic Language of Hindu Iconography and Its Impact on Indian Society
Virtual Lightning Talk France Azema
The interpretation of religious symbolism in Hinduism is one of the main tools for understanding the religion and all the rituals around. This paper faces with the task of recognizing and understanding the meaning of both religious symbols and the whole process of their application in the social everyday life. I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which behaviors and beliefs are acquired independently of conscious wills to do so. Hindu iconography is very rich in symbolism. I will focus here on the various representations of the same goddess: Kāli, and attempt to decipher the complexity of her iconographic symbols. Assuming that Kāli represents the Goddess, mother of all Hindus, loving and protector, why does she look terrifying? (holding weapons and men's bloodied decapitated heads, in her hands) This paper wants to clarify these two seemingly opposite paradigms. Implicit learning of the religion produces a tacit abstract knowledge base that is representative of the structure of the societal environment. Such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn but is very deeply integrated by the whole society.
