Special Issue "Religion and the Working Class in Film"

edited by Sérgio Dias Branco (University of Coimbra)

This Special Issue, entitled “Religion and the Working Class in Film”, aims to combine the latest developments in the study of religion and film with new approaches in working-class studies. Recently, research within the study of religion and film has produced more concrete studies regarding precise topics and works. At the same time, new working-class studies have given special importance to the cultural expressions that emerge from working-class people and evoke their complex, multifaceted, and intersectional experiences. The main purpose of this Special Issue is to publish contributions that investigate the links between religion and the working class in film grounded in these current discussions.

Scholarship on religion and film—from philosophical, theological, and cultural perspectives—has increased in quantity and quality in recent years. Publications by Inge Kirsner (Komm und sieh: Religion im Film, 2020), Stefanie Knauss (Religion and Film: Representation, Experience, Meaning, 2020), S. Brent Plate (Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World, 2nd ed., 2017), as well as those by M. Gail Hamner, Terry Lindvall, Gerard Loughlin, John C. Lyden, Joel W. Martin, and Melanie Wright, among others, have promoted and advanced discussions regarding the complex relations between film and religion. Additionally, some researchers have concentrated on specific religious traditions—e.g., Nathan Abrams (The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, 2012), Francisca Cho (“Imagining Nothing and Imaging Otherness in Buddhist Film”, 1999), Christopher Deacy (Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Medium of Film, 2002), and Kristian Petersen (edited, New Approaches to Islam in Film, 2021)—and others have focused on filmmakers—e.g., Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston (edited, Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick, 2018) or Joel Mayward (The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, 2022). This effort to limit the scope of research within the study of religion and film has produced more concrete studies regarding precise topics and works.

A topic that may be fruitfully paired with religion in the study of film is the representation of the working class. Recently, researchers such as John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon (edited, New Working-Class Studies, 2005) have identified and sought to define new trends in working-class studies. A feature of these tendencies is the way they place the working class at the center of inquiry, rather than as a subsequent topic that surfaces from research into social and economic history. The working class works differently in the workplace, in the household, and in communities, and it is shaped by race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and place, but also religion. These new studies have given special importance to the cultural expressions that emerge from working-class people and evoke their experiences.

This Special Issue seeks research that considers the developments in the study of religion and film and the new methodological approaches in the working-class studies outlined above. Authors should investigate the links between religion and the working class in film grounded in these current discussions.

Research topics may include (but are not limited to) the following, articulated with specific or comparative analyses of films, individually or in a group:

• Religion and labor activism;
• Religion and the migration and displacement of workers;
• Religion and colonialism;
• Religion and working-class environments and backgrounds;
• Class conflicts in religious settings and contexts;
• Cooperation and antagonism between working-class people from different religions;
• Cultural politics of the working class as shaped by religion;
• Labor unions and progressive politics linked with religious doctrine and organizations;
• Intersectional readings that relate religion and class with race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and place;
• Religions and their connections with disadvantaged social strata.

More information here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/ELT133384M