Dr Clive Marsh

Director of Learning and Teaching;
Course Director, BA Humanities and Arts

BA, MEd, DPhil, FHEA

Tel: 0116 252 5924    Email: cm286@le.ac.uk

• Overview
• Research Interests
• Selected Publications
• Topics for Supervision

Overview

Clive Marsh studied in Bangor (Wales), Chicago and Tübingen, before completing his doctorate in modern theology at the University of Oxford. He later added a MEd in Lifelong Learning at the Open University.

Clive has been teaching at university level for over 20 years, moving between university and church appointments throughout that time. From 1995-2000 he was Senior Lecturer in Theology, Religious and Cultural Studies at the University College of Ripon and York St John (now York St John University). He has lectured at the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield (1992-2003), and at the University of Nottingham (2003-8), where he was Principal of the East Midlands Ministry Training Course (2007-8) prior to taking up his post in Leicester.

He supervised PG dissertations and undertook PhD supervision when at York, and picked up doctoral supervision again since coming to Leicester. He has examined MLitt, MPhil and PhD dissertations at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Liverpool Hope.

Clive has lectured by invitation on topics relating to theology, religion, popular culture and the arts in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the US.

He is a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the AAR 19th Century Theology Group, the UK Network for Theology, Religion and Popular Culture, and the Society for the Study of Theology, and co-chair of the Network for Religion and Popular Culture.

Research Interests

Clive’s research interests relate particularly to the way in which religion connects with popular culture and the arts, and on the consequences such study has for understanding how theology and belief-systems ‘work’.

His first publication in this area (on theology and film) dates from 1992, and his Explorations in Theology and Film [1997, co-edited with Gaye Ortiz], in print since publication and used as a text-book throughout the world, led the field in UK discussions in this area. To this he added the sole-authored books Cinema and Sentiment, [2004] and Theology Goes to the Movies [2007].

Clive has recently completed a book on theology and popular music with Vaughan S Roberts for Baker Academic, due out 2012/early 2013. He is currently processing the results of empirical data gathered from music fans during 2009-10, which will feed into a book provisionally entitled Sonic Piety: The Reception of Music and the Persistence of Religion.

Though his own specialist knowledge relates  primarily to his background and research in Christianity and Christian theology, Clive is keenly interested in how popular culture and religion interweave more generally. He has had to do more than just dip his toe into other disciplines in order to undertake the 'theology and culture' work in which he has been engaged for two decades. He recognises that there is much critical, empirical and reflective work which needs doing at the interface between religious, cultural, sociological and media and film studies about how popular culture is currently ‘consumed’ and what this means for patterns of meaning-making in contemporary society.

Selected Publications

• Marsh, C. & Ortiz, G. (eds.), Explorations in Theology and Film (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997; Korean translation published 2006)
• Marsh C., Christianity in a Post-Atheist Age, (SCM Press, 2002)
• Marsh C., Cinema and Sentiment: Film’s Challenge to Theology, (Paternoster Press/Authentic Media 2004)
• ‘Black Christs in White Christian Perspective’: Some Critical Reflections’, Black Theology, 2.1, 2004, 45-56
• Marsh, C., Christ in Practice: A Christology of Everyday Life, (Darton Longman and Todd 2006)
• Marsh, C. & Moyise, S., Jesus and the Gospels (2nd edn.; Continuum 2006)
• ‘High Theology’/ Popular Theology’?: The Arts, Popular Culture and the Contemporary Theological Task, The Expository Times, 117/11 (2006), 447-451
• Marsh C., Theology Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Critical Christian Thinking, (Routledge 2007)
• ‘Why the Quest for Jesus Can Never Only Be Historical: Explorations in Cultural Christology’, Louvain Studies, 32/1-2 (2007), 164-181
• ‘Theology as `Soundtrack': Popular Culture and Narratives of the Self’, The Expository Times, 118/11 (2007), 536-541
• ‘Theology and the Practice of Meaning-Making’, The Expository Times, 119/2 (2007), 67-73 
• ‘On dealing with what films actually do to people: the practice and theory of film-watching in theology/film discussion’. In R.K.Johnston (ed.), Reframing Theology and Film: New Focus for an Emerging Discipline, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2007), 145-161
• (With Charlotte Haines Lyon) ‘Film’s Role in Contemporary Meaning-Making: A Theological Challenge to Cultural Studies’. In S. Knauss & A. Ornella (eds.), Reconfigurations: Inter-Disciplinary Perspectives on Religion in a Post-Secular Culture, (Wien and Berlin: LIT Verlag 2007), 113-125
• ‘The Point of Theology: Arts, Culture and Godly Living’, The Expository Times, 119/6 (2008), 275-281
• ‘Theology, the Arts and Popular Culture: An Annotated Resource List’, The Expository Times, 119/12 (2008), 589-595
• ‘Is It All about ‘Love Actually’?: Sentimentality as Problem and Opportunity in the Use of Film for Teaching Theology and Religion. In G.Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film, (OUP USA 2008), 155-64
• ‘Audience Reception’. In J. Lyden, The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, (Routledge 2009), 255-74
• ‘Theology and Film’. In W.Blizek (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film, (Continuum 2009), 59-69
• ‘Would Wesley Have Gone to the Movies?: Towards a Dynamic Pneumatology of the Arts’, Epworth Review, 37/1, March 2010, 6-17
• ‘Schleiermacher – ein Methodist?: Christliche Bildung vor der Herausforderung der Postmoderne. In Holger Eschmann and Achim Härtner (eds.), Glaube Bildet:  Bildung als Thema von Theologie und Kirche, (Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht 2010), 133-147
• ‘The Fernley Hartley Lecture 2010 - Adventures in Affective Space: The Reconstruction of Piety in an Age of Entertainment’, Epworth Review, 37/3 (September 2010), 6-20
• ‘Jesus as Moving Image: The Public Responsibility of the Historical Jesus Scholar in the Age of Film’. In S. Porter and T. Holmen (eds.), The Handbook of the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol. 4, (Leiden: Brill 2011), pp.3155-3178
• ‘Diverse Agendas at work in the Jesus Quest''. In S. Porter and T. Holmen (eds.), The Handbook of the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol. 2, (Leiden: Brill 2011), pp. 985-1020
• (With Vaughan S. Roberts) ‘Soundtracks of Acrobatic Selves: Fan-Site Religion in the Reception and Use of the Music of U2’ (Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26, 2011, 419-432)