- Dept of Religious Studies
Duke University
118 Gray, Box 90964
Durham, North Carolina 27708 USA
David Morgan
Duke University, Religious Studies, Faculty Member
- David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University with an additional appointment in the Department of... moreDavid Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University with an additional appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. Morgan received a PhD in Art History at the University of Chicago and taught art history for many years at Valparaiso University, where he was Duesenberg Professor in Christianity and the Arts. At Duke he was Director of the Graduate Program in Religion before becoming chair of the Department of Religious Studies in January 2013. Author or editor of thirteen books, Morgan is also a founding editor of the journal Material Religion and is co-editor of a book series at Bloomsbury entitled ‘Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion.’ His latest book is Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (Oxford, 2018). His other books include: The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity (2015), The Embodied Eye (2012), The Lure of Images (2007), The Sacred Gaze (2005), Protestants and Pictures (1999), and Visual Piety (1998).edit
Interview on my recent book, Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment, Oxford University Press
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The instrumentality of religious artifacts is highlighted when they cross the boundaries of geography, spatial setting, religious rivalry, and cultural location. In the experience of some Protestant missionaries in Asia and the South... more
The instrumentality of religious artifacts is highlighted when they
cross the boundaries of geography, spatial setting, religious rivalry, and
cultural location. In the experience of some Protestant missionaries in Asia
and the South Pacific, re-purposing sacred objects often meant the ‘hard’
iconoclasm of destroying them, in which case they become technologies
of the counter-sacred, erasing the old to install a new and rival conception
of sacrality. But the re-utilization of the objects could also sometimes
mean the ‘soft’ iconoclasm of appropriating them for a new use,
according to which the objects were ‘dispatched’ to London for display in
the Missionary Museum as ‘trophies of Christianity.’ They were eventually
de-accessioned and re-tasked once again as ethnographic artifacts, and in
some instances as works of art.
cross the boundaries of geography, spatial setting, religious rivalry, and
cultural location. In the experience of some Protestant missionaries in Asia
and the South Pacific, re-purposing sacred objects often meant the ‘hard’
iconoclasm of destroying them, in which case they become technologies
of the counter-sacred, erasing the old to install a new and rival conception
of sacrality. But the re-utilization of the objects could also sometimes
mean the ‘soft’ iconoclasm of appropriating them for a new use,
according to which the objects were ‘dispatched’ to London for display in
the Missionary Museum as ‘trophies of Christianity.’ They were eventually
de-accessioned and re-tasked once again as ethnographic artifacts, and in
some instances as works of art.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Religion, Japanese Studies, American Studies, Classical Archaeology, Anthropology, and 13 moreArt History, History of Religion, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage, Anthropology Of Art, Ancient Religion, Magic and the Occult (Anthropology Of Religion), Votive practice, Religious Studies, Agency, Ex-Voto, Votive offerings, and Anthropology of Religion
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A conference paper delivered in Vienna two years ago that explores the definition of icon and aura in the setting of modern, mass-produced visual imagery. This is a modified version of what I posted here recently.
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An argument for the study of religion as material practices Full citation: Mind and Matter: Selected Papers of the Nordik 2009 Conference for Art Historians, ed. Johanna Vakkari. Studies in Art History, No. 41. Helsinki: Helsingfors,... more
An argument for the study of religion as material practices
Full citation: Mind and Matter: Selected Papers of the Nordik 2009 Conference for Art Historians, ed. Johanna Vakkari. Studies in Art History, No. 41. Helsinki: Helsingfors, 2010.
Full citation: Mind and Matter: Selected Papers of the Nordik 2009 Conference for Art Historians, ed. Johanna Vakkari. Studies in Art History, No. 41. Helsinki: Helsingfors, 2010.
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A discussion of images of Fabiola and the dynamics of visual production.
Full citation: Francis Alÿs, Fabiola: An Investigation, ed. Karen Kelly and Lynne Cooke. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2008.
Full citation: Francis Alÿs, Fabiola: An Investigation, ed. Karen Kelly and Lynne Cooke. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2008.
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Religious Studies and the editors of the journal Material Religion, I thank you all for coming and especially the many speakers for their long travel and preparation to contribute to our time together. I would also like to take the... more
Religious Studies and the editors of the journal Material Religion, I thank you all for coming and especially the many speakers for their long travel and preparation to contribute to our time together. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the department for its support of the event and the Henry Luce Foundation for a grant in support of the conference. The journal Material Religion produced its first issue in 2005 after several years of planning and is now in its tenth year of publication. The editors—Birgit Meyer, Crispin Paine, Brent Plate, and myself—thought that our tenth anniversary was an appropriate occasion to take stock of the field that the journal has helped to shape. So this conference brings together an international array of researchers at all levels, from graduate students to senior scholars at work in a very wide range of topics, in different academic disciplines, working on various religious traditions, in different geographical areas and historical periods. Our call for papers resulted in over 110 submissions, which allowed us to assemble a dozen panels that capture the complexity of studying religion and materiality.
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The full program for Aesthetics and the Analytical Study of Religion, #SORAAAD2016, SORAAAD & Arbeitskreis Religionsästhetik 9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey. Method and Theory of the Aesthetics... more
The full program for Aesthetics and the Analytical Study of Religion, #SORAAAD2016, SORAAAD & Arbeitskreis Religionsästhetik
9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey.
Method and Theory of the Aesthetics of Religion
Alexandra Greiser, “Aesthetics of Religion – What It Is, and What It Is Good For”
Sally Promey, Respondent
Somatic Approaches to the Aesthetics of Religion
Jens Kreinath, “Somatics, Body Knowledge, and the Aesthetics of Religion”
Rebecca Raphael, “Disability, Aesthetics, and Religious Studies Method”
Deborah Green, ““In A Gadda Da Vida” (In the Garden of Eden)”
Sound and the Senses in the Aesthetics of Religion
Annette Wilke, “Sound Matters: the Case of Hindu India and the Sounding of Sacred Texts. An Applied Aesthetics of Religion”
Jason Bivins, “Immersion, Transcription, Assemblage: On Sonic Impermanence and the Study of Religion”
Religious Diversity, Collective Cultural Agency, and the Question of Aesthetics
Birgit Meyer, “Religious Diversity and the Question of Aesthetics”
Josef Sorrett, “The Abiding Powers of AfroProtestantism”
David Morgan - Respondent
Media and Transmission in the Aesthetics of Religion
Jolyon Thomas, “Framing Religious Subjects in an Irreligious Place: Procedural and Ethical Hurdles in Studying the Religion of Japanese Manga and Anime”
David Feltmate, “Should I Laugh Now? The Aesthetics of Humor in Mass Media”
S. Brent Plate - Respondent
9/9/2016 Update contains suggested readings for J. Sorett and S. Promey.
Method and Theory of the Aesthetics of Religion
Alexandra Greiser, “Aesthetics of Religion – What It Is, and What It Is Good For”
Sally Promey, Respondent
Somatic Approaches to the Aesthetics of Religion
Jens Kreinath, “Somatics, Body Knowledge, and the Aesthetics of Religion”
Rebecca Raphael, “Disability, Aesthetics, and Religious Studies Method”
Deborah Green, ““In A Gadda Da Vida” (In the Garden of Eden)”
Sound and the Senses in the Aesthetics of Religion
Annette Wilke, “Sound Matters: the Case of Hindu India and the Sounding of Sacred Texts. An Applied Aesthetics of Religion”
Jason Bivins, “Immersion, Transcription, Assemblage: On Sonic Impermanence and the Study of Religion”
Religious Diversity, Collective Cultural Agency, and the Question of Aesthetics
Birgit Meyer, “Religious Diversity and the Question of Aesthetics”
Josef Sorrett, “The Abiding Powers of AfroProtestantism”
David Morgan - Respondent
Media and Transmission in the Aesthetics of Religion
Jolyon Thomas, “Framing Religious Subjects in an Irreligious Place: Procedural and Ethical Hurdles in Studying the Religion of Japanese Manga and Anime”
David Feltmate, “Should I Laugh Now? The Aesthetics of Humor in Mass Media”
S. Brent Plate - Respondent
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Aesthetics, Art History, History of Religion, and 35 moreDisability Studies, Material Culture Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Material culture of religion, Religion and Sexuality, Anthropology of the Body, Ritual, African American Religions, Somatics, Music Aesthetics, History of Religions, African American Studies, Aesthetics and Politics, Jazz Studies, Anthropology of the Senses, Material Religion, Conceptual History, Jazz History, Jazz Improvisation, Religion and Disability, Religion and Media, Ritual Studies, Sociology of the Senses, Aesthetics of Religion, Healing and Religion, Historical Semantics, Study of Religion, Spatial Studies, The Senses, Study of Religion as an Analytical Discipline, Histoire Des Mentalités, SORAAAD, Healing Ceremonies, Material Culture and Religioin, and Aesthetics and Religion
David Morgan is Professor of Religion at Duke University, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. Morgan has worked on the visual culture of American Protestantism and Catholicism for... more
David Morgan is Professor of Religion at Duke University, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. Morgan has worked on the visual culture of American Protestantism and Catholicism for many years as well as on the history of religion and media, and art theory. He is the author of several books and co-founder of the journal Material Religion. An autobiographical reflection on the development of an approach to studying mass-produced Protestant images, this chapter explores how the author came to find inadequate the methods of art history in which he had been trained. In order to understand the social life of images, their circulation and popular reception, as a fundamental aspect of the visual construction of religious worlds, Morgan was compelled to combine methods of study. The chapter argues that visuality consists not only of the way things look, but is also determined by the practices of belief that construct likeness. Visual methods need to be configured accordingly.
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Chapter from Richard Howells and Robert W. Maston, eds., Using Visual Evidence (NY: McGraw Hill, Open University Press, 2009), examining the use of images as historical evidence.
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chapter 3, "Religion as Sacred Economy": History of Catholic and Protestant devotional practices and material culture as forms of sacred economy from the 16th century to the present
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Study of the religious visual culture in which seeing is understood as socially structure fields of vision. There is not one gaze, but many different gazes or visual fields, and they do not focus on images, but on the relationship of... more
Study of the religious visual culture in which seeing is understood as socially structure fields of vision. There is not one gaze, but many different gazes or visual fields, and they do not focus on images, but on the relationship of images to viewers, situations, and physical settings.
For purchase, see:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520272231
For purchase, see:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520272231
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An introduction to the book, Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture, edited by David Morgan. London: Routledge, 2008. The Introduction surveys the historiography of the field of scholarship on religion and media. For purchase,... more
An introduction to the book, Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture, edited by David Morgan. London: Routledge, 2008.
The Introduction surveys the historiography of the field of scholarship on religion and media.
For purchase, see:
https://www.routledge.com/Key-Words-in-Religion-Media-and-Culture/Morgan/p/book/9780415448635
The Introduction surveys the historiography of the field of scholarship on religion and media.
For purchase, see:
https://www.routledge.com/Key-Words-in-Religion-Media-and-Culture/Morgan/p/book/9780415448635
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a chapter from the author's book, The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America. London: Routledge, 2007. This chapter examines the shared visual practices and imagery that enabled Americans in the late 19th and... more
a chapter from the author's book, The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America. London: Routledge, 2007.
This chapter examines the shared visual practices and imagery that enabled Americans in the late 19th and 20th centuries to imagine and feel themselves as American.
For purchase, see:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Lure-of-Images-A-history-of-religion-and-visual-media-in-America/Morgan/p/book/9780415409155
This chapter examines the shared visual practices and imagery that enabled Americans in the late 19th and 20th centuries to imagine and feel themselves as American.
For purchase, see:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Lure-of-Images-A-history-of-religion-and-visual-media-in-America/Morgan/p/book/9780415409155
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Introduction to David Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief. London: Routledge, 2010.
For purchase at: https://www.routledge.com/Religion-and-Material-Culture-The-Matter-of-Belief/Morgan/p/book/9780415481168
For purchase at: https://www.routledge.com/Religion-and-Material-Culture-The-Matter-of-Belief/Morgan/p/book/9780415481168
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Chapter one from David Morgnan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
For purchase at: http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195130294.html
For purchase at: http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195130294.html
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Exhibition catalog essay on the place of James Tissot's illustrated bible in American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From: Judith F. Dolkart, ed., James Tissot: The "Life of Christ," exhibition catalog.... more
Exhibition catalog essay on the place of James Tissot's illustrated bible in American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
From: Judith F. Dolkart, ed., James Tissot: The "Life of Christ," exhibition catalog. London: Merrell Publishers, with Brooklyn Museum, 2009, pp. 48-65
From: Judith F. Dolkart, ed., James Tissot: The "Life of Christ," exhibition catalog. London: Merrell Publishers, with Brooklyn Museum, 2009, pp. 48-65