-
Media, Religion and Gender presents a selection of eminent current scholarship that explores the role gender plays when religion, media use and values in contemporary society interact. The book: surveys the development of research on media, religion and culture through the lens of key theoretical and methodological issues and debates within gender studies. includes case…
-
For the Holy Year 2025, the Vatican announced a new mascot, Luce (“Light” in Italian)[1], a manga-like figurine of a pilgrim with blue hair and big eyes. According to Archbishop Fisichella, as written in a tweet by Catholic TV, Luce is part of a Vatican project “to live even within the pop culture so beloved…
-
A long time ago, on one auspicious day, a robot cardinal was elected to be pope. “All factions now are agreed on itself has taken a hand in the deliberations. The computer has been strongly urging the candidacy of the robot. I suppose we should not be surprised by this loyalty among machines. Nor should…
-
This essay explores the potential for generative artificial intelligence (G-AI)[1] to facilitate spiritually augmented feedback loops. Here, spiritual augmentation refers to the evolution of the felt impact of a spiritual tradition and/or practice. Spiritual augmentation involves reducing the time it takes for a spiritual practice to become biologically efficacious (or the point at which a…
-
If only a portion of current predictions about AI are correct, it will indeed be a revolutionary technology. AI is different because it can talk to us, debate with us, and even refuse us. Hundreds of millions of people have used it, and billions of dollars have been spent and made from it. And yet…
-
I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us..—Ursula K.…
-
While scholars in this forum have been reflecting on artificial intelligence’s potential impact on human agency, autonomy, and identity, especially for religious communities, new revolutionary tools and expansive platforms have emerged, creating new concerns about how AI abilities are outpacing human technological skills. Google DeepMind has launched Genie 2, a platform that transforms a single…
-
Ever since cartoons were created as a medium of political and social commentary, they have been used to both criticize and uplift religious communities. The anti-Catholic cartoons of Thomas Nast and Jack Chick are easily recognizable, but interestingly, among twenty-first-century Catholic communities in Europe and the United States, Catholics themselves have been creating caricatures of…
-
This article focuses on Pope Francis activities on Twitter and understanding the way of using this kind of social media by religious authorities. By examining Francis’s tweets from half a year of his pontificate (from September 13, 2013 to March 16, 2014), the author offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying the presence of…
