Attempting Genuine Interdisciplinarity

'This approach [of integrating cultural studies and religious studies] argues that religion is embedded and enacted in the material culture and artefacts. It contends that the material (including books, films, or art) has no intrinsic meaning of its own, and that it cannot be 'read' without attention to historical context. .....

In short, it brings to the study of religion(s) a heightened focus on the material dimension and on occasionality - the details of the conditions in which religious meanings are re-created and expressed. ..... There is potential here for the fields [of 'religion/theology and film'] to grow towards each other, creating an interface of theories and subject matter － the kind of genuinely interdisciplinary work that has rarely happened to date.'

Melanie J. Wright,
Religion and Film: An Introduction
(London: I.B. Tarius, 2007) p. 28.