RELG355

Museums and cultural heritage sites often contain and display objects and exhibits related to religion. Art museums exhibit icons, history museums show artifacts, and cultural heritage sites exhibit materials from active religious communities. Some museums and heritage sites focus on topics explicitly connected to religion, such as Holocaust memorials or museums of world religions. And some sacred sites have even become museums. This course examines the way that museums and related cultural heritage sites exhibit and display religion. We study objects, collections, physical buildings, and digital spaces. We consider questions related to curation, aesthetics, and rhetoric. We think about (post)colonization, cultural power, and public knowledge. We also consider the religious practices associated with museums and cultural sites, such as pilgrimages and veneration of exhibited objects. This class includes field visits to Chicago area museums, some as a group and others individually. Prerequisites: Any Religion course or permission of instructor.