Politics of Representation in American Religion: Media, Technology, and Display

The role of media in both politics and religion is often presumed to be one of broadcasting information to the public. And yet forms of communication are seldom detached entirely from the processes of creating the information that is conveyed. The entanglement of religion, public identities, and media began well before the introduction of cable television and Twitter. This course is designed to draw students’ attention to modes of mediating public identities in American history by focusing on ways in which religion and religiosity have been represented through visual and material artifacts. Students will become familiarized with visual and material culture methods and modes of analysis in historical research as well as learn to identify and analyze relationships between religion, representation, and public identities in multiple periods of American history and through a variety of technologies.