Rituality and Aesthetic Experience from Multidisciplinary Approaches

This volume offers a multidisciplinary exploration of how ritual practices shape aesthetic experience as a sensory, symbolic, and cultural phenomenon. Bringing together perspectives from art history, biblical studies, architecture, gender studies, Islamic studies, literary studies, and archaeometry, it examines rituality not as passive tradition but as a dynamic process through which perception, embodiment, memory, and cultural meaning are negotiated. Through case studies ranging from biblical iconography and Islamic minority practices to theatrical performance, sacred architecture, literature, and the sensory worlds of ancient cultures, the contributors explore how rituals are represented, transformed, and reinterpreted across different historical and cultural contexts. Structured around the interconnected themes of visual culture, architecture, and material and literary practices, the volume demonstrates how aesthetic experience mediates the relationships between the body, the senses, belief, power, and collective identity, inviting readers to rethink ritual as a dynamic language of human creativity and cultural memory.

Bridges ritual studies with gender, architecture, and literature across cultures and time Offers a transdisciplinary framework for understanding aesthetic experience as embodied and emotional Illuminates ritual as a dynamic force in shaping identity, belief, and resistance

Autorentext

Cristina Expósito de Vicente is an art historian and holds a PhD in Religious Studies. She teaches in the Department of Art History at the University of Valencia (Spain). Her research focuses on the intersections between art and religion, particularly biblical reception, visual exegesis, material culture, and gender in historical and contemporary visual culture.

Belén Cuenca holds a PhD in History and Humanities and a degree in Art History, specializing in medieval Islamic art. Her postdoctoral research focuses on Mudejar and Morisco heritage in the former Kingdom of Valencia. She currently runs Dunya Hanya Patrimonio, a company dedicated to interpreting Islamic heritage across the Mediterranean.

Inhalt

Part I: Experiences from Visual and Gender Studies.- Chapter 1. Mary Magdalene in Audiovisual Culture. Between the Asexual Body and Eroticism Elena Monzón Pertejo.- Chapter 2. NO! to the Weinsteins of this World: Susanna in Revolt Mieke Bal.- Chapter 3. The agency capacity of Herodias and Salome in visual exegesis: Decapitating and mutilating the head of John the Baptist as dishonor and subjugation Cristina Expósito de Vicente.- Part II: Aesthetic Experiences in Architecture.- Chapter 4. Emotional experiences during the conversion of Mudejar mosques in Valencia Kingdom (1524). Fear and resistance Belén Cuenca Abellán.- Chapter 5. Theaters of Conversion: Ritualized Performances of Belief in Early Modern Spain Catherine Infante.- Chapter 6. Magyar Kalvaria: Place that transfers sacrum Pawel Neuman-Karpiski.- Part III: Experiences from Letters and Material Culture.- Chapter 7. When image accompanies text: the book of Ruth in Jacob Steinhardt's engravings Guadalupe Seijas de los Ríos Zarzosa.- Chapter 8. Mediterranean Islamic Minorities. Rites and Rimes in Context Luis F. Bernabé Pons.- Chapter 9. Poetics of Liberation: aesthetic and political experience in Liberation Theology Javier Recio Huetos.- Epilogue Chapter 10. Experiences from organoleptic methodologies: Approach to rituality from physical-chemical analysis María Luisa Vázquez de Ágredos Pascual.