In light of more recent conversations about religion and its import as a factor in the global geopolitical and cultural spheres, augmented by the "contracting" of relationship among people and nations, Communication and the Global Landscape of Faith highlights geographical, architectural, and a partial issues as significant and edifying dimensions of the study of communication and religion. Insights are gleaned through the prism of the philosophical, built, performative, political, and intercultural landscapes.

Communicating with Our Families: Continuity, Interruption, and Transformation examines how communication technologies are shaping childhood, parenthood, and families by exploring topics such as parental loneliness, family storytelling, family technology rules, mindful technology usage, multigenerational communication, and community. The scholars in this volume work from a human communication perspective and use various research modes of inquiry including quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive methods. Perhaps the most significant question implied by our contributors in this volume is whether the introduction of new communication technologies will fundamentally alter familial forms and if those new groupings that emerge will resemble what has been generally assumed for several millennia.

"Collection of essays that reassesses history as rhetoric and rhetorical history as practice "--

This collection brings together perspectives on the interplay of communication, dialogue, and responsibility, exploring communicative acts of disruption toward a social environment attuned to short-sighted individualism. Semioethics highlights the condition of inevitable entanglement with the other at the origin of sociality, which demands a response to the other based on listening and accountability. The volume introduces readers to the theoretical foundations of semioethics, an emergent direction within sign and language studies which relies upon a commitment to otherness, unindifference, and dialogue. Building on the dialogic approaches of Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas, chapters, grouped into five sections, are all guided by the notion of responsibility toward the other outside do ut des logic and greedy exchange. This collection highlights the ways in which semioethics considers the ethical implications of the signs that mediate dialogue among persons in the social sphere, public and private, sacred and profane. It presupposes the notion that signs are only meaningful in their relation to other signs and the intersubjectivity among persons in dialogue. Chapters also variously examine how the interplay of semioethics and dialogue underpins public life and the existential gifts that sustain a healthy polis. This book will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, dialogue research, communication ethics, and philosophy of communication.

What is it about the rhetoric of one the most influential and powerful religious leaders in the world and in history—Pope Francis—that is so engaging and yet so challenging to the Church writ large, the American Congress, the news media, and the world? The Rhetoric of Pope Francis: Critical Mercy and Conversion for the Twenty-first Century provides extensive insight into this question through a close, in-depth rhetorical analysis of Pope Francis’s visual, spatial, tactile, written, and oral discourse. This analysis reveals how the interrelated topoi of illness, space, mercy, and conversion converge to articulate Francis’s vision for the Church. Under Francis, the Catholic Church’s virtue of mercy gets renewed and redeployed to papal, pastoral, and political sites for the purpose of conversion. Each chapter identifies several of Francis’s dominant rhetorical strategies. These “pope tropes” take the form of existing and widely held Catholic beliefs that, while stable, still invite interpretation, disputation, and open dialogue. Studying Francis’s various discourses provides us with an exemplary paradigm from which we can learn much about faith, humility, love, and papal rhetoric’s transformative capacity to help us live more compassionate lives.

Praised by Albrecht Dürer as being “the best in painting,” Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1430– 1516) is unquestionably the supreme Venetian painter of the quattrocento and one of the greatest Italian artists of all time. His landscapes assume a prominence unseen in Western art since classical antiquity. Drawing from a selection of masterpieces that span Bellini's long and successful career, this exhibition catalogue focuses on the main function of landscape in his oeuvre: to enhance the meditational nature of paintings intended for the private devotion of intellectually sophisticated, elite patrons. The subtle doctrinal content of Bellini’s work—the isolated crucifix in a landscape, the “sacred conversation,” the image of Saint Jerome in the wilderness—is always infused with his instinct for natural representation, resulting in extremely personal interpretations of religious subjects immersed in landscapes where the real and the symbolic are inextricably intertwined. This volume includes a biography of the artist, essays by leading authorities in the field explicating the themes of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s exhibition, and detailed discussions and glorious reproductions of the twelve works in the show, including their history and provenance, function, iconography, chronology, and style.

Christianity and Confucianism: Culture, Faith and Politics, sets comparative textual analysis against the backcloth of 2000 years of cultural, political, and religious interaction between China and the West. As the world responds to China's rise and China positions herself for global engagement, this major new study reawakens and revises an ancient conversation. As a generous introduction to biblical Christianity and the Confucian Classics, Christianity and Confucianism tells a remarkable story of mutual formation and cultural indebtedness. East and West are shown to have shaped the mind, heart, culture, philosophy and politics of the other - and far more, perhaps, than either knows or would want to admit. Christopher Hancock has provided a rich and stimulating resource for scholars and students, diplomats and social scientists, devotees of culture and those who pursue wisdom and peace today.

The social sciences have largely ignored the role of physical buildings in shaping the social fabric of communities and groups. Although the emerging field of the sociology of architecture has started to pay attention to physical structures, Brenneman and Miller are the first to combine the light of sociological theory and the empirical method in order to understand the impact of physical structures on the religious groups that build, transform, and maintain them. Building Faith explores the social impact of religious buildings in places as diverse as a Chicago suburb and a Guatemalan indigenous Mayan village, all the while asking the questions, "How does space shape community?" and "How do communities shape the spaces that speak for them?"

This book reflects the changes in technology and educational trends (cross-disciplinary learning, entrepreneurship, first-year learning programs, critical writing requirements, course assessment, among others) that have pushed theatre educators to innovate, question, and experiment with new teaching strategies. The text focuses upon a firm practice-based approach that also reflects research in the field, offering innovative and proven methods that theatre educators may use to actively engage students and encourage student success. The sixteen essays in this volume are divided into five sections: Teaching with Digital Technology, Teaching in Response to Educational Trends, Teaching New Directions in Performance, Teaching Beyond the Traditional, and Teaching Collaboratively or Across Disciplines. Study of this book will provoke readers to question both teaching methods and curricula as they consider the ever-shifting arts landscape and the potential careers for theatre graduates.

This interdisciplinary introduction offers students a truly global overview of the worldwide spread and impact of Christianity. It is enriched throughout by detailed historic and ethnographic material, showing how broad themes within Christianity have been adopted and adapted by Christian denominations within each major region of the world. Provides a comprehensive overview of the spread and impact of world Christianity Contains studies from every major region of the world, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, the North Atlantic, and Oceania Brings together an international team of contributors from history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as religious studies Examines the significant social, cultural, and political transformations in contemporary societies brought about through the influence of Christianity Discusses Protestant, Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox forms of the faith Features useful maps and illustrations Combines broader discussions with detailed regional analysis, creating an invaluable introduction to world Christianity