Books by Joe Kickasola
Published Essays by Joe Kickasola
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: a religiously complex film and a complex filmmaker, from a complex ... more Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: a religiously complex film and a complex filmmaker, from a complex nation. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Turkey is constantly balancing a secular constitution, Muslim majority (around 99%), and unavoidable early Christian history. This complexity—indeed, tension—shows forth in the film. In the end, the film can be seen as a type of ritual of skepticism, whereby one confronts darkness, horror, and hopelessness consistently, for a constructive purpose. This essay explores these complex religious dynamics through an analysis of Ceylan’s formal choices. From the mythic title (“Once Upon a Time”), to his theologically suggestive use of natural forces (wind, fire, lightning), to his complicated relationship with the aesthetics and power of the religious icon, we see a formal articulation of timeless issues beyond words. It at once evokes religious experience and existential nihilism, co-present as hammer and anvil, able to create or destroy the shield of faith.
On November 17, 2012, at the American Academy of Religion’s National Meeting, the Religion, Film,... more On November 17, 2012, at the American Academy of Religion’s National Meeting, the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group sponsored a session entitled, “Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion and Film Studies in the Last Decade.” The session focused on four recent books in the field of Religion and Film: John Lyden’s Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals (NYU, 2003); S. Brent Plate’s Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (Wallflower Press, 2009); Antonio Sison’s World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus (Routledge, 2012); and Sheila Nayar’s The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the ‘Genuinely’ Religious Film (Continuum, 2012). Each author was present to make remarks on his or her book, and then three respondents made remarks on each of the books as well. The respondents were Stefanie Knauss, Rachel Wagner, and Jolyon Thomas. Joe Kickasola introduced the session, and moderated the discussion that followed. This session represented a rare opportunity for scholars of the field of Religion and Film to reflect on the past, present, and future directions of the field, and the Journal of Religion and Film is happy to be able to include the remarks of all the presenters here.
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2006
... Thanks to Mary Slaughter for steady encouragement and Elizabeth Belz Odegard for help with th... more ... Thanks to Mary Slaughter for steady encouragement and Elizabeth Belz Odegard for help with the manuscript. My parents, Dr. Joseph N. and Myrenna Kickasola, gave me everything I needed to arrive here, and my wife, Linnea, continues to sustain me. ...
Book Reviews by Joe Kickasola
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2010
Other by Joe Kickasola
Papers by Joe Kickasola
Journal of Religion and Film, 2013
Joe Kickasola: IntroductionGood morning. My name is Joe Kickasola. I teach at Baylor University a... more Joe Kickasola: IntroductionGood morning. My name is Joe Kickasola. I teach at Baylor University and I'm privileged to introduce this panel and share my perspective on it, which may be somewhat different from those that are here in the room. I come at this topic as a filmmaker and film theorist interested in religious faith and experience, not as a theologian interested in film. In my own field, very few people are interested in faith as a point of focus, despite its obvious importance in human life. I'm sure you all could articulate the reasons for this strange omission far better than I, but I puzzled over it most intensely as I was writing a book on the filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. In that process, it became clear that to ignore the faith questions - and, more importantly, the dynamics of questioning and wrestling with faith - would be to completely miss the heart and soul of that filmmaker's work. The importance of the sacred, and the way it suffuses life and cinem...
The constant balance between a secular constitution, Muslim majority, and an unavoidable Byzantin... more The constant balance between a secular constitution, Muslim majority, and an unavoidable Byzantine Christian history stands as one of Turkey's most unique characteristics as a nation. This complexity-indeed, tension-forms an uneasy foundation for Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a film that serves as a site of negotiation for contemporary belief and doubt. In the end, the film can be seen as a type of existential ritual, whereby Ceylan utilizes and sometimes inverts religious tropes to test their efficacy in the face of evil, horror, and hopelessness.This approach places Ceylan within the "post-secular constellation," which Bradatan and Ungureanu (2014) describe as a diverse group of European filmmakers, varying in their aims, beliefs, and aesthetics, but united in their opposition to dogmatic secularism. Though many are atheists and remain highly critical of religion, their films present the case that "religion cannot be simp...
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online, 2017
Nochimson/Companion, 2015
Film Quarterly, 2013
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
On November 17, 2012, at the American Academy of Religion’s National Meeting, the Religion, Film,... more On November 17, 2012, at the American Academy of Religion’s National Meeting, the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group sponsored a session entitled, “Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion and Film Studies in the Last Decade.” The session focused on four recent books in the field of Religion and Film: John Lyden’s Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals (NYU, 2003); S. Brent Plate’s Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (Wallflower Press, 2009); Antonio Sison’s World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus (Routledge, 2012); and Sheila Nayar’s The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the ‘Genuinely’ Religious Film (Continuum, 2012). Each author was present to make remarks on his or her book, and then three respondents made remarks on each of the books as well. The respondents were Stefanie Knauss, Rachel Wagner, and Jolyon Thomas. Joe Kickasola introduced the session, and moderated the discussion that followed. This session represented a rare opportunity for scholars of the field of Religion and Film to reflect on the past, present, and future directions of the field, and the Journal of Religion and Film is happy to be able to include the remarks of all the presenters here.
Forthcoming by Joe Kickasola
High publicity and more frequent citations (as indicated by several studies) • Thorough peer revi... more High publicity and more frequent citations (as indicated by several studies) • Thorough peer review • Fast manuscript handling time • Coverage by leading indexing services (SCIE Web of Science, etc.) • Immediate publication upon acceptance • No space constraints (no restriction on the length of the papers, electronic files can be deposited as supplementary material) Special Issue Topics: • embodiment • sacrament • ritual • transcendence • cinema • film studies • film theory • phenomenology Dear Colleagues, This special issue of Religions will focus upon overlapping areas of cinema and Judeo-Christian theology in their "lived" or "experiential" dimensions. Both theology and cinema studies have shown recent interest in these lived, experiential aspects, as seen in William Dyrness's Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life, Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley's The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, the rise of neo-phenomenological film theory (e.g., Vivian Sobchack, Jennifer Barker), as well as a renewed "embodied" emphasis in the humanities and cognitive film theory.
Edited Books by Joe Kickasola
Violence and Nihilism, 2022
Nihilism seems to be per definition linked to violence. Indeed, if the nihilist is a person who a... more Nihilism seems to be per definition linked to violence. Indeed, if the nihilist is a person who acknowledges no moral or religious authority, then what does stop him from committing any kind of crime? Dostoevsky precisely called attention to this danger: if there is no God and no immortality of the soul, then everything is permitted, even anthropophagy. Nietzsche, too, emphasised, although in different terms, the consequences deriving from the death of God and the collapse of Judeo-Christian morality. This context shaped the way in which philosophers, writers and artists thought about violence, in its different manifestations, during the 20th century.
The goal of this interdisciplinary volume is to explore the various modern and contemporary configurations of the link between violence and nihilism as understood by philosophers and artists (in both literature and film).
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Books by Joe Kickasola
Published Essays by Joe Kickasola
Book Reviews by Joe Kickasola
Other by Joe Kickasola
Papers by Joe Kickasola
Forthcoming by Joe Kickasola
Edited Books by Joe Kickasola
The goal of this interdisciplinary volume is to explore the various modern and contemporary configurations of the link between violence and nihilism as understood by philosophers and artists (in both literature and film).
The goal of this interdisciplinary volume is to explore the various modern and contemporary configurations of the link between violence and nihilism as understood by philosophers and artists (in both literature and film).