Book Presentation Picturing Aura

Presentation by Jeremy Stolow, Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Canada, and 2025-2026 research-fellow at Paris IAS about his book, Picturing Aura, (MIT Press, 2025) at Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS).

Presentation in English. Free event and on-site. 
Registration is required via the following link: https://nias.knaw.nl/events/book-presentation-picturing-aura/

Presentation

On 4 November 2025, Jeremy Stolow, Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Canada, and research-fellow at the Paris IAS will present his book Picturing Aura at NIAS in Amsterdam.

It chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, exploring how its images are put to work in psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.

It follows exchanges and conflicts among scientists and occultists, countercultural artists and entrepreneurs, metropolitans and hinterland figures, showing how the aura operates as a boundary object serviceable to the diverse tasks of making art, healing bodies, and mapping a hidden cosmos.

In so doing, the book reflects on the challenges posed by attempts to picture aura for settled assumptions about religion, science, and art.

Join us for a conversation with the author and invited respondents: Justine Bakker (assistant professor in Comparative Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen), Birgit Meyer (professor at the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University), and Mattijs van de Port (professor at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, UvA).

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