Drawings of gods: A Multicultural and Interdisciplinary Approach of Children’s Representations of Supernatural Agents

Drawings of gods: A Multicultural and Interdisciplinary Approach of Children’s Representations of Supernatural Agents

Also known as: drawings-gods

The pictorial representations of the gods are very widely present in various religious traditions. The imagination of children is also impacted by this theme. Their representations vary according to age, of course, but are also influenced by the religious education received and the cultural environment. Collecting drawings is a widely proven technique for studying imaginary representations of children. Based on a collection of several hundred drawings in various regions of the world, including Brazil, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia and Switzerland, this project studies the evolution of the representation of God or other supernatural beings (gods, spirits, geniuses, etc.) in children and adolescents between 5 and 18 years old. A focus is put on the strategies implemented by children: recourse to traditional religious representations, to images of supernatural beings conveyed by animated films or comics. At the end of the project, the objective is to have been able to describe the main strategies used by the children while being able to highlight how the choice of one strategy rather than another is influenced by age, sex, religious education and the cultural environment of the child. The work context is interdisciplinary. The analysis of the collected material combines computer processing of images and descriptions provided by specialists in child development, the study of religions and the cultural contexts of origin of the drawings. These image analyzes will be supplemented by textual analyzes of comments provided by the children to explain what they have drawn.

Type of Data

ImageText

Data Languages

French

Keywords

Child developmentCross-culturalDatabaseDigital humanitiesDrawingsInterdisciplinaritySupernatural agents

Disciplines

Psychology10105 Psychology10102 Religious studies, Theology10201 SociologySociology of religion

Temporal Coverage

1987-2018 (de) / 1987-2018 (fr) / 1987-2018 (en)

Cite this Project

Citation

Brandt, P.-Y., Serbaeva O., Cocco, Ch., Dessart, G., Dandarova Robert, Z., Rivoal, M., 2019, Dessins de dieux [database] (DaSCH), https://ark.dasch.swiss/ark:/72163/1/0105.

Data Access

Access Rights
Open Access with Restrictions
License
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
(2021-09-02)

Copyright

Drawings of gods: A Multicultural and Interdisciplinary Approach of Children’s Representations of Supernatural Agents

Contact

Full professor
Université de Lausanne
pierre-yves.brandt@unil.ch

Project Timeline

Period
2015-03-01
Status
Ongoing

Funding

Grants
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Grant: 156383
Interdisciplinary Projects
More info
Data Management Plan
Not accessible