Page - 57 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

Staging the Dead | 57www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 57–64 Anna-Katharina Höpflinger Staging the Dead The Material Body as a Medium for Gender and Religion aBsTraCT The body is one of the basic media that form and communicate gender. how impor- tant gender is for the perception of an individual becomes especially clear by looking at the exhibition of a dead body. having nothing left other than the body, the de- ceased are reduced to characteristics that seem to be the basis of a specific culture. however, in religious contexts the exhibition of mortal remains can also be used to overcome gender differentiations. In this article, I will focus on Central Europe, and argue that material presentations are an authoritative means of forming concepts of gender and religion. KeyWOrDs gender, body, death, material religion, ossuaries, european history of religion BiOGraPhy Anna-Katharina Höpflinger is a research and teaching assistant at the Centre for Reli- gion, economy and Politics (ZrWP) at the University of Zurich. since completing her PhD in the Study of Religion, she has developed research projects in the field of media and religion, particularly focussing on the body, clothing, and gender. she also is inter- ested in religions in the ancient world and in european history. Media, religion and gender are interlinked in very different ways. As Mia Lövheim has shown, these connections must be understood as processes embedded in specific cultural contexts.1 While lövheim focuses on contemporary, primarily social media and their forming of religion and gender, i want to step back from technological de- velopment and see if it is possible to scrutinise functional similarities in more tradi- tional forms of religion. lövheim uses the term “mediatisation” for processes sur- rounding media, stressing the activity, the complexity, and the relevance of the con- text of media communication. She defines mediatisation as a shift from religious insti- tutions to popular mass media in matters of the authority to form and communicate 1 lövheim 2013, 1–14.