Kathryn Lofton and Alan Thomas - "Consuming Religion" and "55x5"
How is Goldman Sachs a religious sect? What makes the number 5 so compelling?
Author Kathryn Lofton will be in conversation with editor and photographer Alan Thomas about her new book Consuming Religion and their collaboration on his new photobook, 55x5
At the Co-op
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About Consuming Religion: What are you drawn to like, to watch, or even to binge? What are you free to consume, and what do you become through consumption? These questions of desire and value, Kathryn Lofton argues, are questions for the study of religion. In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney Spears and the Kardashians, corporate culture and Goldman Sachs, Lofton shows the conceptual levers of religion in thinking about social modes of encounter, use, and longing. Wherever we see people articulate their dreams of and for the world, wherever we see those dreams organized into protocols, images, manuals, and contracts, we glimpse what the word “religion” allows us to describe and understand. With great style and analytical acumen, Lofton offers the ultimate guide to religion and consumption in our capitalizing times.
About 55x5: “Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5…” So wrote William Carlos Williams in one of his most famous poems. Drawn to the strange allure of the number 5, Alan Thomas found Williams’s “great figure” beckoning from Sicilian graffiti to Chicago parking lots. His fifty-five photographs riff on the number’s figurative qualities, while Kathryn Lofton’s introduction explores its interpretive possibilities—and the nature of photographic obsession.
About Kathryn Lofton: Kathryn Lofton is professor of religious studies, American studies, history and divinity at Yale University.
About Alan Thomas: Alan Thomas is Editorial Director at the University of Chicago Press.
Related Titles
What are you drawn to like, to watch, or even to binge? What are you free to consume, and what do you become through consumption? These questions of desire and value, Kathryn Lofton argues, are questions for the study of religion. In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney...
“Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5…” So wrote William Carlos
Williams in one of his most famous poems. Drawn to the strange allure of the
number 5, Alan Thomas found Williams’s “great figure” beckoning from
Sicilian graffiti to Chicago parking lots. His fifty-five photographs riff
on the number’s figurative qualities, while Kathryn Lofton’s introduction
explores its interpretive possibilities—and the nature of photographic
obsession.