What does it feel like to experience the sacred today? Examining in detail many of this century's most significant writers, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth Strout, Marilynne Robinson, Mohsin Hamid, Michael Chabon, Howard Jacobson and Don DeLillo, Divinity, Hospitality and the Posthuman in 21st-Century Literature: The Material Sacred argues that contemporary social and cultural forms, most especially those of 21st century literature, are marked by what Emily McAvan calls a material sacred. Placing Christian, Jewish and Muslim writers in conversation with the new materialisms, this book shows how secular and sacred mix unpredictably in contemporary writing. In this important contribution to the understanding of religion, materialism and literature, McAvan maps new territory, arguing that the material sacred shows us that the human and non-human, the divine and the profane, have been interwoven from the start.

This book takes the groundbreaking work of Lee Edelman in queer theory and, for the first time demonstrates its importance and relevance to contemporary theology, biblical studies, and religious studies. It argues that despite extensive interest in Edelman’s work, we have barely begun to understand the significance of Edelman’s ideas both in their own right and with respect to the study of religion. Therefore, it offers fresh approaches to Edelman’s work that necessarily complicate the established interpretations of his thinking. With essays by rising and established scholars, as well as a response by Edelman himself, it contends that by fully engaging Edelman, scholars of religion will have to confront negativity and its consequences in ways that will contribute to reshaping the terrain of scholarship on religion, race, sexuality, and social change. The insights provided in this book are new territory for much of the study of religion. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious studies, theology and Biblical studies as well as gender studies and queer, feminist, and critical race theory.

What does it feel like to experience the sacred today? Examining in detail many of this century's most significant writers, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth Strout, Marilynne Robinson, Mohsin Hamid, Michael Chabon, Howard Jacobson and Don DeLillo, Divinity, Hospitality and the Posthuman in 21st-Century Literature: The Material Sacred argues that contemporary social and cultural forms, most especially those of 21st century literature, are marked by what Emily McAvan calls a material sacred. Placing Christian, Jewish and Muslim writers in conversation with the new materialisms, this book shows how secular and sacred mix unpredictably in contemporary writing. In this important contribution to the understanding of religion, materialism and literature, McAvan maps new territory, arguing that the material sacred shows us that the human and non-human, the divine and the profane, have been interwoven from the start.