Jeremy Stolow, PhD

Education and Visiting Fellowships

BA, Philosophy, University of Toronto, 1989

MA, Social and Political Thought, York University, 1993

PhD, Social and Political Thought, York University, 2000

Postdoc, Social & Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, 2000-2002

Visiting Fellow, Center for Religion & Media, New York University, 2003-2004

Senior Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 2017-2018

Visiting Fellow, Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 2025-2026

Areas of research

Media History; Material Religion; Religion & Media; Visual Culture and Image Theory; History of Photography; Technology and Culture; Print Culture; Spiritualism, Magic, and the Occult; Science and Technology Studies; History of the Body; Alternative Medicine and Medical Pluralism

Courses

Interviews about my research

"To Look in Small Crevices" (an Interview by Heather Mellquist Lehto and Hannah Mayne, for the "Entangled Worlds" Project, U of Toronto, Jan 2019). Available here.

"God in the Machine" (interview by Nora Young for CBC Radio's "Spark", 2013). Available here.

Books and Edited Collections

Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography. Forthcoming April 2025. The MIT Press. Details here.

"Enlightening Religion." Special issue of Critical Research on Religion, co-edited by Jeremy Stolow and Birgit Meyer, Vol. 9, No.2 (August 2021).

Connect and Divide: The Practice Turn in Media Studies, co-edited with Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, and Erhard Schütpelz. Berlin and Chicago: Diaphanes & University of Chicago Press, forthcoming Dec 2020. Details here.

"Light Mediations." Special Issue journal issue co-edited by Jeremy Stolow and Birgit Meyer. Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, Vol.16, No.1 (2020). Available here.

“Visible/Invisible: Religion, Media and the Public Sphere,” special journal issue co-edited by Jeremy Stolow and Alexandra Boutros, Canadian Journal of  Communication, Vol.40, No.1 (January 2015). Details here.

“Animer/Animating,” special journal issue co-edited by Jeremy Stolow and Sébastien Denis, Intermédialités: histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques, no.22 (automne 2013). Details here.

Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between, edited book, New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. Preview the book here.

Orthodox By Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution, University of California Press, 2010. Finalist for the 2010 Nahum Sarna Award of the National Jewish Book Council. Details here.

Articles and Book Chapters

"Some Notes on the Visualization of the Pandemic Body." Religious Matters in an Entangled World: Dossier Corona, May 2020. Available here.

“O Sistema Nervoso Espiritual: Reflexões Sobre um Possível Cabo Magnético Projetado para Comunicação Espiritual.” Debates do NER, Vol. 19, no. 35 (2019): 293–346. Available here.

"Mediumnic Lights, Xx-Rays,and the Spirit Who Photographed Herself". Critical Inquiry, Vol.42, no.4 (July 2016): 923-951. Details here 

“Le synthétique sacré. Réflexions sur les aspects matériels des textes juifs orthodoxes.” Terrain, n° 59: L’objet livre, (September 2012): 120-137. Details here.

“Salvation By Electricity”. In Hent de Vries (ed).  Religion: Beyond a Concept . New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Preview the book here.

“Holy Pleather: Materializing Authority in Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Publishing”. Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, Vol.3, No.3 (autumn 2007): 314-335. Details here.

“Communicating Authority, Consuming Tradition: Jewish Orthodox Outreach Literature and its Reading Public.” In Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors (eds).  Religion, Media and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006, pp.73-91. Preview the book here.

“Religion and/as Media”.  Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No.4 (August 2005), pp.119-145. Details here.

“Transnationalism and the New Religio-Politics: Reflections on a Jewish Orthodox Case”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 21, No.2 (April 2004), pp.109-137. Details here.

May 2023: “Thelma Moss, Aura Photographer.” Simulations of the Unseen in the History of Art, Science, and the Occult Conference. ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

May 2021: “On Phantom Leaves and Phantom Limbs.” Uncommon Senses III Conference, Concordia University, Montréal.

January 2020: "“Reflections on the Prospects of a Post-Secular Media Studies,” Into the Air Conference, Carleton University, Ottawa.

January 2019: “Aura Bodies: Technology, Visuality, and the Politics of Boundary Objects.” Entangled Worlds: Sovereignty, Soil and Sanctity. University of Toronto.

November 2108: “Healing (with) Pictures: Aura Photography, Alternative Medicine, and the New Age Spiritual Marketplace.” Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts, Toronto.

March 2018:  ‘Instruments of Science, Tools of Occultism: On Photography, Auras, and the Study of Religion and Technology’ (invited public lecture). University of Uppsala, Sweden.

Nov 2013: I gave the closing Keynote Address to the conference, “Looking Through the Occult,” at the Humboldt U Berlin. You can listen the audio of my talk here.

January 2012: “Nervous Sympathies, Wired Nations, and Metallic Spirits.” This was one of the Plenary Addresses at the conference, “Digital Religion,” University of Colorado-Boulder. Watch the video of my presentation here