David Feltmate
I am a specialist in the sociologies of religion, mass media, culture, knowledge, and humor who conducts research at the intersections of these five areas. I trained at the University of Waterloo, where I received my Ph.D. in 2011. I have recently completed a book entitled Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy (forthcoming from NYU Press) about the cultural politics of religious representation in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy in the contemporary United States. I am now starting two new projects. One is a study of religious stand-up comedians and how their mass mediated humor is part of religious world building. I will be using Atheist, Christian, and Muslim comedians for this study. Second, my colleague Kimberly P. Brackett (Sociology, AUM) and I have received funding from the Louisville Institute to study the relationship between pastors' beliefs about family and family ministries in the Montgomery area.
I conduct research in two broad areas in the intersections of religion, mass media, and culture: First, in the area of religion and humor in sociological perspective, I research the ways that comedians mediate religious ideologies to their audiences. Specifically, I want to know how performing humor across multiple media platforms is part of the larger ideological and sociological process of maintaining and changing the cultural worlds of different religious groups. Second, I am researching the ways that people use mass media to sacralize social institutions such as hockey in Canada and freedom of speech and sexual behaviors in the United States so that we can understand how sacralization and religiousness arise from individual and collective behavior and lead to social change and stability.
I also maintain an ongoing interest in the relationships between religion and the state, specifically groups that are politically marginalized such as cults and new religions, and the significance of their treatment at the hands of more powerful groups and institutions. My research on religion and the family also fits into this vein as I want to know how family ideology influences religious practice and vice versa.
Phone: 334-244-3391
Address: Department of Sociology
School of Liberal Arts
Auburn University at Montgomery
7041 Senators Drive
Montgomery, AL 36124-4023
I conduct research in two broad areas in the intersections of religion, mass media, and culture: First, in the area of religion and humor in sociological perspective, I research the ways that comedians mediate religious ideologies to their audiences. Specifically, I want to know how performing humor across multiple media platforms is part of the larger ideological and sociological process of maintaining and changing the cultural worlds of different religious groups. Second, I am researching the ways that people use mass media to sacralize social institutions such as hockey in Canada and freedom of speech and sexual behaviors in the United States so that we can understand how sacralization and religiousness arise from individual and collective behavior and lead to social change and stability.
I also maintain an ongoing interest in the relationships between religion and the state, specifically groups that are politically marginalized such as cults and new religions, and the significance of their treatment at the hands of more powerful groups and institutions. My research on religion and the family also fits into this vein as I want to know how family ideology influences religious practice and vice versa.
Phone: 334-244-3391
Address: Department of Sociology
School of Liberal Arts
Auburn University at Montgomery
7041 Senators Drive
Montgomery, AL 36124-4023
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Books by David Feltmate
Feltmate, develops a picture of how each show understands and communicates what constitutes good religious practice as well as which traditions they seek to exclude on the basis of race and ethnicity, stupidity, or danger. From Homer Simpson’s spiritual journey during a chili-pepper induced hallucination to South Park’s boxing match between Jesus and Satan to Peter Griffin’s worship of the Fonz, each show uses humor to convey a broader commentary about the role of religion in public life. Through this examination, an understanding of what it means to each program to be a good religious American becomes clear.
Drawn to the Gods is a book that both fans and scholars will enjoy as they expose the significance of religious satire in these iconic television programs.
To preorder the book from NYU Press: http://nyupress.org/books/9781479890361/
The link below will take you to the Introduction
Papers by David Feltmate
illustrates how the paradigm is taught in textbooks on new religious movements, shows its value through the recent work of Stuart A.Wright and Susan J. Palmer, and offers a criticism of the paradigm through Benjamin E. Zeller’s study of Heaven’s Gate. The question of what makes each movement and its study significant is raised and challenged. The article concludes with reasons for moving new religions scholarship beyond the social problems paradigm in favor of a paradigm of social possibilities.
: This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the “Mommy Wars” which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women’s sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces.
culture. Using Victor Turner’s concept of the liminoid, in this article I survey The Simpsons’ annual ‘‘Treehouse of Horror’’ episodes and suggest that thinking with these episodes can help scholars re-envision the academic construction of religion and the paranormal. I will argue that scholars should collapse the distinction between ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘the paranormal’’ in academic and popular discussions.
specific groups have found their way into these programs, it concludes with a discussion of the political significance of these programs’ satire."
""
Interviews by David Feltmate
Book Reviews by David Feltmate
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 44 (2): 299-304.
SORAAAD Workshop by David Feltmate
9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey.
Method and Theory of the Aesthetics of Religion
Alexandra Greiser, “Aesthetics of Religion – What It Is, and What It Is Good For”
Sally Promey, Respondent
Somatic Approaches to the Aesthetics of Religion
Jens Kreinath, “Somatics, Body Knowledge, and the Aesthetics of Religion”
Rebecca Raphael, “Disability, Aesthetics, and Religious Studies Method”
Deborah Green, ““In A Gadda Da Vida” (In the Garden of Eden)”
Sound and the Senses in the Aesthetics of Religion
Annette Wilke, “Sound Matters: the Case of Hindu India and the Sounding of Sacred Texts. An Applied Aesthetics of Religion”
Jason Bivins, “Immersion, Transcription, Assemblage: On Sonic Impermanence and the Study of Religion”
Religious Diversity, Collective Cultural Agency, and the Question of Aesthetics
Birgit Meyer, “Religious Diversity and the Question of Aesthetics”
Josef Sorrett, “The Abiding Powers of AfroProtestantism”
David Morgan - Respondent
Media and Transmission in the Aesthetics of Religion
Jolyon Thomas, “Framing Religious Subjects in an Irreligious Place: Procedural and Ethical Hurdles in Studying the Religion of Japanese Manga and Anime”
David Feltmate, “Should I Laugh Now? The Aesthetics of Humor in Mass Media”
S. Brent Plate - Respondent
Feltmate, develops a picture of how each show understands and communicates what constitutes good religious practice as well as which traditions they seek to exclude on the basis of race and ethnicity, stupidity, or danger. From Homer Simpson’s spiritual journey during a chili-pepper induced hallucination to South Park’s boxing match between Jesus and Satan to Peter Griffin’s worship of the Fonz, each show uses humor to convey a broader commentary about the role of religion in public life. Through this examination, an understanding of what it means to each program to be a good religious American becomes clear.
Drawn to the Gods is a book that both fans and scholars will enjoy as they expose the significance of religious satire in these iconic television programs.
To preorder the book from NYU Press: http://nyupress.org/books/9781479890361/
The link below will take you to the Introduction
illustrates how the paradigm is taught in textbooks on new religious movements, shows its value through the recent work of Stuart A.Wright and Susan J. Palmer, and offers a criticism of the paradigm through Benjamin E. Zeller’s study of Heaven’s Gate. The question of what makes each movement and its study significant is raised and challenged. The article concludes with reasons for moving new religions scholarship beyond the social problems paradigm in favor of a paradigm of social possibilities.
: This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the “Mommy Wars” which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women’s sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces.
culture. Using Victor Turner’s concept of the liminoid, in this article I survey The Simpsons’ annual ‘‘Treehouse of Horror’’ episodes and suggest that thinking with these episodes can help scholars re-envision the academic construction of religion and the paranormal. I will argue that scholars should collapse the distinction between ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘the paranormal’’ in academic and popular discussions.
specific groups have found their way into these programs, it concludes with a discussion of the political significance of these programs’ satire."
""
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 44 (2): 299-304.
9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey.
Method and Theory of the Aesthetics of Religion
Alexandra Greiser, “Aesthetics of Religion – What It Is, and What It Is Good For”
Sally Promey, Respondent
Somatic Approaches to the Aesthetics of Religion
Jens Kreinath, “Somatics, Body Knowledge, and the Aesthetics of Religion”
Rebecca Raphael, “Disability, Aesthetics, and Religious Studies Method”
Deborah Green, ““In A Gadda Da Vida” (In the Garden of Eden)”
Sound and the Senses in the Aesthetics of Religion
Annette Wilke, “Sound Matters: the Case of Hindu India and the Sounding of Sacred Texts. An Applied Aesthetics of Religion”
Jason Bivins, “Immersion, Transcription, Assemblage: On Sonic Impermanence and the Study of Religion”
Religious Diversity, Collective Cultural Agency, and the Question of Aesthetics
Birgit Meyer, “Religious Diversity and the Question of Aesthetics”
Josef Sorrett, “The Abiding Powers of AfroProtestantism”
David Morgan - Respondent
Media and Transmission in the Aesthetics of Religion
Jolyon Thomas, “Framing Religious Subjects in an Irreligious Place: Procedural and Ethical Hurdles in Studying the Religion of Japanese Manga and Anime”
David Feltmate, “Should I Laugh Now? The Aesthetics of Humor in Mass Media”
S. Brent Plate - Respondent