Volume 32 Number 4 / October 2006 Religious Studies Review / 235

WEBSITES FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION AND THE MEDIA

Websites Reviewed

THE RESOURCE CENTER FOR MEDIA, RELIGION,AND CULTURE<http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/mcm/mrc>

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF JOUR-NALISM AND THE CENTER FOR RELIGION ANDMEDIA<http://www.nyu.edu/fas/center/religionandmedia>

MEDIALITERACY.COM<http://www.medialiteracy.com>

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH SCHOOL OF DIVIN-ITY MEDIA AND THEOLOGY PROJECT<http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/mediaandtheol>

Websites in Brief

THE REVEALER: A DAILY REVIEW OF RELIGION ANDTHE PRESS<http://www.therevealer.org>

Reviewer: Debra MerskinUniversity of OregonEugene, OR 97403

his essay describes five websites on topics related to religionand the media that are current, reliable, and interesting.These sites were selected because they are academically

affiliated, supported by significant grants, and/or have Internetlongevity.

The Resource Center for Media, Religion, and Culture (http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/mcm/mrc)

Housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center forMass Media Research, the Resource Center for Media, Religion,and Culture is a clearinghouse for information on conferences,fellowships, publications, and resources. The content for this sitewas originally written and compiled by Dr. Lynn Schofield Clark,and the website was designed by Christof Demont-Heinrich. It isupdated by the school’s information technology staff and bySchofield Clark, assisted by doctoral student Nadia Kaneva.Because of some personnel changes, a university-based contractorwill be taking over the design and maintenance, at which pointthe center’s director, Professor Stewart M. Hoover (assisted byKaneva and postdoctoral student Monica Emerich), will keep thecontent up to date.

The information contained on the website is presented on themain page with a brief description of the intent of the center. Thisincludes an up-to-date Public Conferences on Media, Religionand Culture section. This is a helpful resource for anyone inter-ested in the current activities in this field. There is also a sectioncalled Visitors to the Center. This page provides a list of peoplewho have spent time at the center as visiting professors, lecturers,

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collaborators, and postdoctoral fellows, as well as testimonialsabout their experiences.

The center had provided fellowships for doctoral students andpromotes this on the website. Three students have been selectedeach academic year, beginning in 2002 and finishing in 2007, forcompetitive funding. Two books will be produced in 2007, whichare compilations of this doctoral student research. The first, editedby Schofield Clark, is on religion, media, and the marketplace.The second, edited by Stewart M. Hoover, is on religion, media,and globalization.

The website also provides a section for The International StudyCommission on Media, Religion, and Culture. This is a group ofscholars and practitioners who have gathered to consider theshape and direction of both productive and reflective work in thethree intersecting fields of media, religion, and culture. This ispart of a wider effort to coordinate academic reflection and studycurrently conducted by many organizations and individualsaround the world, and thus facilitate dialogue designed to stimu-late and support both scholarship and media production.

A significant resource is provided on the website in the sec-tion Sites & People to Know in Media, Religion, and Culture.This page offers a broad range of links to sites ranging fromacademic journals to sites devoted to news coverage of religion.Subject areas include research sites such as The Center for Reli-gion and Civic Culture, The Asian Research Center for Religionand Social Communication, Center for the Study of Religionand American Culture, and the Religious Broadcasting site.Links to journals includes the Journal of Media and Religion,Journal of Religion and Film, and the Journal of Religion andPopular Culture.

The Online Teaching and Syllabi sections and the resourcespresently posted there reflect a Christian perspective but includeboth liberal and conservative viewpoints. The Syllabi link in-cludes one course, Religion and Media, taught at the Universityof North Carolina, Charlotte. There are also links to moviereviews from a religion, media, and culture perspective and toservice organizations such as FaithandValues.com, Beliefnet.org,synagogues.com, and Islamicity.com. The links from NewsOrganization section include the BBC Online: Religion andEthics, news releases from Worldwide Faith, Religion News,Moreover.com, and the Religion Newswriters Association. TheAdvocacy Organization section links to Conflict Resolution andPeace Studies, which connects one to the Center for Holocaust,Genocide, and Peace Studies, to InterReligious Federation forWorld Peace, and to Moral Re-Armament Initiatives for Change.

The General Info section of the website offers an array ofdemographic information, religious statistics (estimated member-ship of different faiths), an interfaith calendar (world religiousfeasts), and other links. The Post 9/11 Reflections section is adistinctive part of the website that offers links to publications,papers, and other resources for understanding what roles the massmedia are playing in commemoration, stereotyping, and globalpeacemaking. Links lead on to 9/11: Pop Culture and Remem-brance; the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Program; ArtNow: Nationwide Artistic Responses to the September 11th Trag-edy and its Aftermath; and Geocities’ NYC World Trade CenterWeb Page.

In the field of religion, media, and culture, this site is perhapsthe most comprehensive. However, one limitation is its almostexclusively Christian orientation, which may be a reflection of the

236 / Religious Studies Review Volume 32 Number 4 / October 2006

Internet resources available and of the nature of this field ofscholarship.

New York University Center for Religion and Media (http://www.nyu.edu/fas/center/religionandmedia)

One of the ten Centers of Excellence funded by The Pew Chari-table Trusts, the NYU Center for Religion and Media officiallybegan in May 2003 as part of an effort to stimulate research andteaching in the interdisciplinary study of religion. The center’sgoal is to develop and broaden interdisciplinary and cross-culturalscholarship, pedagogy, and public knowledge of religion andmedia. The center is a joint project between NYU’s ReligiousStudies Program (Angela Zito, director) and the Center for Media,Culture, and History (Faye Ginsburg, director; Barbara Abrash,director of public programming). Jeff Scharlett is the editor of thecenter’s excellent Web journal, The Revealer: A Daily Review ofReligion and the Press (http://www.therevealer.org).

The creation of the website was a group effort, coordinated bygraduate student Leo Hsu. Work-study students keep it updatedin the fall and spring, as well as two weeks before public events.This is a credible website because of its connection with NYUand because of its reliable funding sources. Funding comes fromThe Pew Charitable Trust under its MODIYA Project: Jews/Media/Religion. It is designated as a resource for researchers,teachers, and students, produced by the Working Group on Jews,Media, and Religion at the center.

The website contains information concerning fellowships atthe center and events and projects related to religion and themedia. It has links to NYU’s Department of Journalism and thecenter’s online publications, which include articles, a forum, adaily blog, and a virtual casebook entitled “September 11 andAfter.”

Medialiteracy.com (http://www.medialiteracy.com)

This website on media literacy has a section worth visiting calledReligion & Media. The entire site, as Susan Rogers (founder,editor, and publisher) describes it, is “a one-person labor of love.”A professional Web developer launched the site two years ago,while Rogers, who maintains and updates the text and links,created the content. The website focuses upon media literacyeducation and provides a number of valuable resources towardthis end. The last update to the Religion & Media page was early

2006, at which time the FaithMobile link was added. The sitecontains links to organizations that meet at the intersection ofreligion and media, a host of online resources, and important printpublications such as Walter Armbrust’s Mass Mediations: NewApproaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyondand Dale Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson’s New Media and theMuslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere.

The key aspects of this site include links to a speaker’s bureau,free, downloadable materials on religion and media, and statisticson religion and media. The website also provides links to articlessuch as “The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The SpiritualLife of the World’s Most Animated Family” and “The GospelAccording to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust,” both by MarkI. Pinsky.

The University of Edinburgh School of Divinity: The Media and Theology Project (http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/mediaandtheol)

Part of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the Univer-sity of Edinburgh, the Media and Theology Project was estab-lished in the early 1990s to connect scholars and practitioners, tofacilitate research on the theological and ethical implications ofcommunication, and to provide innovative teaching on media andreligion.

The project’s home page describes its mission and program,and it presents links to publications, research and conferenceopportunities, and teaching support. In addition, the left sidebaroffers links to past public lectures (with downloadable copies ofpresentations) and a list of the center’s publications. Titles includeMediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Cul-ture, Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching,and Interact, the project’s newsletter). Information about post-graduate study, the project’s history, and advisory panel are alsolisted. The Links section presents an interesting array of websites,including those of institutions associated with the project such asthe Theology Through the Arts Project and the Resource Centerfor Media, Theology, and Religion.

Several links are provided to websites and data sources thatwill be of interest. Scholars interested in Scottish literature canlink to The Breadalbane Letters (1548-83), which provides thefull text of 324 letter manuscripts from sixteenth-centuryScotland. Other websites include the Edinburgh ProphecyNetwork, African Christianity Project Bibliography, MissionaryCollections, and e-Learning Resources.