Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an edited volume that explores the intersection of religion and cinema through the lenses of critical discourse. The focus of the shared inquiry are various films comprising the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and corresponding Netflix series. The contributors explore various religious themes and how they intersect with culture through the canon on the MCU. The first part focuses on responses to the societal, governmental, and cultural context that solidified with clarity during the 2016 Presidential Election cycle in the United States and in the following administration. Additionally, it provides lenses and resources for engaging in productive public actions. Part two explores cultural resources of sustaining activism and resistance as well as some of the key issues at stake in public action. The third part centers on militarization and resistance to state violence. Taken in concert, these three sections work together to provide frames for understanding while also keeping us engaged in the concrete action to mobilize social change. The overarching aim of the volume is to promote critical discourse regarding the dynamics of activism and political resistance.
Preface: Marveling Religion: Visual Culture as a Common Tongue Daniel White Hodge and Jennifer Baldwin Technology, Violence, and Sacrifice Chapter One: “I See A Suit of Armor Around the World: Tony Stark’s Techno-Idolatry and Self-Sacrificial Love George A. Dunn and Jason T. Eberl Chapter Two: Mimesis, Conflict, and Sacrificial Crisis in Black Panther Matthew Brake Chapter Three: Bulletproof Love: Luke Cage (2016) and Religion Ken Derry, Daniel White Hodge, Laurel Zwissler, Stanley Talbert, Matthew J. Cressler, and Jon Ivan Gill Power, Worth, and Society Chapter Four: Old Gods in New Films: History, Culture, and Religion in Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Thor: Ragnarok Rhiannon Gran and Jo Henderson-Merrygold Chapter Five: The Worthiness of Thor Adam Barkman and Bennett Soenen Chapter Six: “Who Are You?”:René Girard, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Black Panther Ryan Smock Chapter Seven: The Failure of a God: Thor, the Snap, and Post-Holocaust Political Theology Andrew T. Vink Chapter Eight: Mysterio as Antichrist in SpiderMan: Far From Home George Tsakiridis Deconstructing Norms, Imagining the New Chapter Nine: Science and the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Deconstructing the Boundary between Science, Technology, and Religion Lisa Stenmark Chapter Ten: Religion, Science, and the Marvel Universe: Re-Imagining Human-Earth Relations Whitney Bauman and Imran Khan Chapter Eleven: “Open Your Eye”: Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Trauma Resolution Jennifer Baldwin Forming Identity Chapter Twelve: Marvelling at Captain Danvers, Or What is So Super About Our Heroes: Contesting the Identity Politics of Self-Other John C. McDowell Chapter Thirteen: The Super Muslim and the Marvel Cinematic Universe: A Complicated Trajectory of Fantasy and Agency Dilyana Mincheva Chapter Fourteen: Bad Girls Turned Superwomen: A Critical Appraisal of the MCU Archetype for Superheroines Will Abney
Jennifer Baldwin is director of Grounding Flight Wellness Center, Woodstock, Georgia. Her primary area of scholarship is the intersection of traumatology and systematic theology. Daniel White Hodge is associate professor of intercultural communication and chair of the communication arts department at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois.
Reviews for Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Marveling Religion stands as a powerful text, and the questions and conversations posed by the writers are engaging and challenging in the best possible ways. They name how these films offer representation and diversity while also spotlighting spaces and elements that continue to uphold problematic ideologies and worldviews. Marvel narratives are multivalent in their reception and can act as a mirror or prophetic lens to the toxic and insidious elements of our culture, while also still being bound to it as a product of a cultural time and place. From a teaching standpoint, the essays in this collection are a strong tool for engaging the variety of questions posed in them. On a personal note, I have used several of the essays from this text in my freshman interdisciplinary seminars. They have offered my students a great space to be guided through wrestling with questions of technology, otherness, and the monstrous in relationship to films and characters they know well. Marveling Religion is an important and valuable text to use as a conversation starter and scaffolding piece.
