The study of material and visual cultures of religion moves beyond treating “religion” as an abstract concept or set of teachings and includes attention to the sights, objects, places, sounds, and smells that shaped, and still shape, human engagement with religious practices, ideas, and institutions across different traditions and historical periods. As an analytical framework, material and visual culture draws attention to the agency of objects as non-human persons, the ways in which space shapes notions of sacredness, and public performances to facilitate new religious ideas and practices.
Faculty within this specialization understand that humans are sensory beings and that this should foreground our study of the religion, from holidays and sacred sites to mundane everyday interactions. They examine various sites and ideas, including European memorial sites, art and science museums and exhibitions, theme parks, sacred trees in Ethiopia, and ritual performance in India. Their research is interdisciplinary by design, and accordingly they work in close collaboration with the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions, the Center for Global Islamic Studies, the Center for African Studies, and the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies.
Faculty
Yaniv Feller
Terje Østebø
Vasudha Narayanan