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Religion as Art: Guadalupe, Orishas, and Sufi. Edited by Steven Loza. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Pp. xiii, 353. Notes.
The conference Towards a Theory for Religion as Art: Guadalupe, Orishas, and Sufi, sponsored by the Arts of the Americas Institute at the University of New Mexico, was held on May 12-14, 2004This edited collection of essays, taken from the conference papers, has the strengths and weaknesses of most volumes of published conference papers. It develops an innovative interdisciplinary approach, incorporating art history, social history, and various types of cultural criticism and performance studies into the analysis of religious symbols, with a heavy emphasis on the Virgin of Guadalupe. Scholars interested in broadening the historical canon will find the discussion of music and dance especially interesting, though the broad sweep of the text leaves crucial aspects of the project somewhat underdeveloped. While the work will be an essential text for those concerned with the Virgin of Guadalupe, especially the migration and redefinition of this sacred symbol over space and through time, the excellent...