In Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America, Marie W. Dallam and Benjamin E. Zeller assemble an enticing collection of scholarship which explores the relationship between religious belief, practice, and identity and physical and sartorial expressions. Acknowledging the breadth of religious studies research that incorporates material culture, body studies, fashion, and glamour theory, or concentrates on specific religious traditions, Dallam and Zeller contend that their volume’s distinction lies in their contributing authors’ focus and variety. Their studies “are concerned with attire as both religious culture and religious practice, with all other considerations secondary. In other words, their questions always begin with religion…they reverse the approach of work that originates in other fields and add a new angle to the discussions that have already begun within religious studies” (pp. 8–9). While this compendium of essays, with accompanying discussion questions for each chapter, is intended for nonspecialists, they will likely enjoy readership among students of all levels in the field of religious studies.
The fourteen chapter-volume is divided into four parts: theological adornment, identity adornment, negotiated adornment, and activist adornment. These frameworks mirror the same lenses the editors applied in their (along with Reid L. Neilson and Nora L. Rubel’s) previous edited collection on religion and food, Religion, Food, & Eating in North America (Columbia University Press, 2014). These categories of emphasis and analysis may be helpful guides for students, but they should be approached as loose, rather than definitive, groupings. Several scholars blend approaches to investigate how adornment operates within a religion, engages viewers outside of the religion, or functions as a medium of activism. For instance, Elaina Smith’s “Dressed for Glory: White Uniforms in African American Church Traditions as Visual Political Theology,” is a study of theology, identity, and activism.
Smith’s essay, like most of the essays, concentrates on twentieth- and twenty-first-century expressions of spirituality, identity, and practice with an eye toward several less common religions such as Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Black Israelites, the Nation of Islam, North American Wiccans, and Hare Krishnas. Outside of organized religion, but no less religious, are the college students who illustrate their bodies with Christian tattoos as examined in “The Christian Tattoo: Much More than Skin Deep” by Jerome R. Koch and Kevin D. Dougherty. Or, the less structured Church of Body Modification, introduced by Marie W. Dallam, in which members seek a divine connection through the acquisition and display of bodily accoutrements such as tattoos and piercings. Dallam’s essay also reveals the juridical prejudice faced by those whose religious expressions alter their body. Finally, interspersed among these atypical religions and practices are essays on Old Order Amish, Pentecostals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Catholic clergy. Across the essays, readers will encounter recurring themes. Authors uncover religious concerns over women’s potential to be temptresses, through their apparel, among Oneness Pentecostals, Latter-Day Saints, the Nation of Islam, and Hare Krishnas. While emphasis on controlling women’s appearance surfaces with some frequency in the essays, so too are examples of women making use of their clothing to communicate authority and claim respectability. The authors do not restrict themselves to dress and adornment analysis alone. Andrienne Nock Ambrose’s “Faith, Fashion, and Film in the Jazz Age: Catholic Vestments Encounter the Roaring 1920s,” and Andrea Shan Johnson and Leah Payne’s, “Power Before Thrones of God and Man: Women, Adornment, and Public Life in White American Pentecostalism” explore the significance of intertexual communication, fashion and film, to promote acceptability in the case of Catholic priests and to harness popular fashion to convey Trinitarian Pentecostal theology. Finally, decisions regarding religious attire and adornment reflect formal and informal political positions and negotiations. In “Holy Dashikis! Black Sartorial Nationalism and Black Israelite Religion,” by André E. Brooks-Key and “‘Queens of the Earth’: The MGT Uniform as a Form of Identity Creation and Nation Building,” by Kayla Renée Wheeler, distinctive apparel operates as a form of nation building and theology-based identity reclamation.
Most essay contributors provide concise context for their topic, equipping students with the necessary introduction to each religious tradition or a historic conflict associated with the tradition. Likewise, the majority of chapters demonstrate original research through surveys, ethnographic fieldwork, and primary source analysis. Both the extensive review of scholarly sources related to visual culture, clothing, and adornment and the variety of methodologies applied make this collection instructive reading for those interested in incorporating dress and adornment into their religious studies research or focusing on embodied religion exclusively.
A collection of scholarship on attire and adornment will likely excite readers’ visual curiosity. What do the clothes, for instance, look like? In this regard, readers will have to undertake a bit of their own research. Several essays did not include any illustrative images or perhaps just one or two images. Securing copyright for images can be expensive and time consuming, but it should be a priority in a text on attire and adornment. Essays also reflect different stages of research. A few of the essays are preliminary studies and others examine a relatively small group of practitioners or a narrow set of years. Rather than limitations, these discrete studies should be viewed as invitations. Readers will find opportunities to look further into the embodied expressions of these and other religious groups, who are not treated in this collection as well as those whose interreligious identities, such as queer practitioners, are unexamined in these brief studies. The variety will be an asset to undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in exploring the diverse ways clothing and adornment work in religious culture. Instructors adopting the volume may also want to add discussions of methodology and consider how these scholars’ essays speak to each other. Overall Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America is a valuable addition to the field of religions studies and will inspire further questions and research among its readers.
