One of S&S’s founding members Asher J. Klassen gave the following lecture this week at Durham University’s Theology and Religion Department.

In this lecture I tackle first and foremost the matter of censorship, both in the lecture hall and as it pertains to depictions of Muhammad in modern media. I look at the prophet in animation and then in comics, before moving on to discuss some of the visual functions of the comics medium and connecting visual abstraction as presented by McCloud to identity as defined by religious symbols. After a brief comparison of the idea of bodily representation in Christianity and Islam I close with some thoughts on the human drive as meaning-making, cultural animals and the role of censorship as we create our history.

(The audio for the recording is a little quiet, so turn up your speakers if need be; it begins around 1:30.)

Klassen also collaborated with another S&S founding member, A. David Lewis, on an eight-page comics version of Lewis’s book American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife as “The Superhero Afterlife (Abridged)” for the Sacred Matters web magazine of public scholarship.

Read the full comic here.