Introduction

Abstract

Kvicalova reconstructs the social, religious, and material relations at the heart of the Genevan Reformation by attending to various facets of its auditory culture. She proposes to investigate the performativity of sensory perception in the framework of Calvinist religious epistemology, and to approach hearing and acoustics both as tools through which the new religious identity was fashioned and performed, and as objects of knowledge and rudimentary investigation. She places the study of religious auditory communication against the backdrop of broader transformations in the epistemic status of the senses during the period, and situates her research in the context of “sound studies,” sensory anthropology and the histories of religion, media, and knowledge.

Parts of this chapter were published in Anna Kvicalova, “Sensing the Reformation: How Media-Historical Narratives Constrain the Study of Religious Change,” Religio: Revue pro religionistiku 26 (2018): 31–48.