Marcia Brennan

This project comprises research for a research seminar that draws on the combined methodological perspectives of art history and religious studies. Mystical texts and the visual arts have contributed immeasurably to shaping individual and collective conceptions of the spiritual in modern and postmodern culture. The integration of rigorous textual analysis with direct experiential practices brings a multifaceted approach to bear on the relationship between aesthetic and mystical creativity--between the often conflicting domains of spiritual experience, intellectual analysis, and beauty. Insight may be gainedinto the ways in which these distinctive yet overlapping modalities of knowledge have integrally shaped developments in high culture, sacred practice, and visual representation.