“If, as ecocinema scholar Adrian Ivakhiv suggests, a film is not only what happens between the dimming and brightening of theater lights, if it is also what happens in our discussions about it, then this collection brilliantly takes the measure of the conversations surrounding the highest grossing blockbuster of all time. Better still, the book draws you back into the dialogue, and asks you to reconsider what you think you know about a film so provocative that is has taken center stage in the global imagination.”

"Taylor's new exciting volume gets at the heart of where most Westerners are engaging religious and spiritual life today: the realm of popular culture. The book's contributors lead us on a compelling journey through a complex cultural ecology of religion, politics, fan forums, ethics, ecotopian promise, corporate violence, and troubling notions of the "native." At the end, we emerge with an altered eye, appreciating the power of narrative brought alive through the transformative semiotics of visual culture. Accessible for the uninitiated and yet interesting to the specialist, Avatar and Nature Spirituality is just one of a new generation of books that are shifting the very way we conceive of religion. As traditional congregational studies gather dust, vanguard scholarship that attends to the global "congregation" of mass culture will bring the study of religion into a new era, and this volume contributes to that important turn."