research & Publications
CV
Current Projects
Abandoned Sacred
Abandoned Sacred is a developing research project, initiated with Ronald L. Grimes, as we tracked the closure, deconsecration and transformation of Highgate United Church, located in southwestern Ontario. Building on this initial study, the project will expand to consider churches closure at a number of sites in North American and Europe, including cases in Newfoundland. (Click to learn more about Highgate United).
The premise informing this work is simple: Ritual sites have life histories. Such places include built structures (churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, longhouses) as well as natural sites (groves, caves, rivers, plateaus, mountains) marked as special through myth and ritual. After they are conceived, they grow, undergo transformations, and eventually die. Sometimes they or their parts are recycled. For this project we will examines buildings and sites that have been abandoned or radically transformed. Abandonment does not necessarily bring down the curtain on a place’s religious significance or use but can instead be the first act in a larger, longer social drama: a synagogue becomes a mosque; a Hopi kiva, the centre piece of a national park; a city-center church, a thriving pub. Historically considered, religious sites and buildings have often been built by one religion and later appropriated by another. In addition, religious architecture, built for liturgical purposes, may be converted into a theatre or condominium. Like people, buildings can be “converted,” bringing along in the wake a similar sense of heightened emotion and dramatic transformation. The phrase “abandoned sacred” refers to the process of un- and re-making that sometimes overtake consecrated buildings and locales. Even when this process seems to propel a site from sacred to secular, “ghosts” and others sacral residues may remain. Using a combination of ethnographic, visual, and historical methods, the research examine the social-cultural, aesthetic, and religious dynamics taking place at sacred sites selected to illustrate the range of transformative possibilities. Typically, research on sacred places has focused on statically conceived symbolic meanings of religious architecture. In contrast, our project emphasizes moments of change in the uses and meanings of sacred places, because studying sacred sites during moments of crisis and change offers valuable insight into the dynamic interactions of religion and culture. A secondary aspect of the study is to examine cultural responses and attitudes towards the phenomenon of ruins and the motif of the "abandoned sacred" in religious texts, historical processes, and the arts.
Religion, Festivity and the Arts
publications
Books
Forthcoming - Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford)
Performing the Reformation: Public Ritual in the City of Luther (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Veneration and Revolt: Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism (Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2009).Select Articles, Chapters & Reviews