Offers an integrated theory of the study of religion as visual culture. Providing key tools for scholars across disciplines studying the materiality of religions, this title gives an overview including case studies of the ways seeing is related to touching, hearing, feeling, and such ephemeral experiences as dreams, imagination, and visions.

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Part One. Culture's Two Bodies 1. Vision and Embodiment 2. The Body in Question 3. Ways of Seeing 4. Icon and Interface Part Two. The Senses of Belief 5. The Matter of the Heart: Touching and Seeing 6. The Look of Sympathy: Feeling and Seeing 7. The Enchantment of Media: Hearing and Seeing 8. At the Cusp of Invisibility: Visions, Dreams, and Images Notes Select Bibliography Index

"Exploring a dazzling variety of religious imagery, David Morgan shows how vision functions as an active, physical process, embedded in bodily experience and profoundly shaped by social practice. Morgan's bold, thoughtful interpretations will fascinate art historians and students of visual culture as well as historians of religion.” -Pepe Karmel, Department of Art History, New York University"The Embodied Eye is an important and truly groundbreaking book. It represents a substantive and quite fascinating extension of David Morgan's previous work- especially as it impressively shows us how 'seeing' is the primary medium of social life, and materially integrates the body of the individual and the body of the group. Morgan is unquestionably the pioneering theorist in the whole emergent field of Visual and Culture Studies as it relates to religion and art." -Norman Girardot, University Distinguished Professor, Lehigh University“Under David Morgan’s inspiring guidance, readers are taken on a dazzling journey through religious images that mediate worlds of faith. Embedding vision in the body, this book stands out with its thought-provoking approach to religious media as material and embodied interfaces that underpin the social construction of the sacred.” -Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University

"This rewarding book will provoke thought and re-vision... Highly recommended." Choice "Excellent analysis of the social dynamics of the visual field." -- Monique Scheer, Universitat Tubingen Journal Of Religion In Europe "Morgan's clever and penetrating academic analysis of case studies provides his text with profundity and interest." -- Jeremy W. H. Arnold Religious Studies Review "A first-rate work of scholarship... Anyone piqued by these subjects will find David Morgan's pioneering vision deeply satisfying." Image