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MAVCOR began publishing Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion in 2014. In 2017 we selected a new name, MAVCOR Journal. Articles published prior to 2017 are considered part of Conversations and are listed as such under Volumes in the MAVCOR Journal menu.

  • Anya Montiel
    Unlike its solid stone predecessor, deSoto’s work, made from painted polyethylene cloth, is hollow, filled only by air from a fan that keeps the sculpture inflated. The resemblance to the reclining Buddha is nonetheless remarkable, from the curls of hair to the folds of the robe, the one exception being that deSoto superimposed his own facial features, complete with goatee, on this Buddha.
  • Sally M. Promey
    In the second half of the nineteenth century, in Europe and the United States, chalkware accomplished for three-dimensional devotional objects what chromolithography managed for images in two dimensions.
  • A black and white photo depicts a dark-skinned woman in a white veil cradling a swaddled baby close to her chest. She folds her hands in her lap and casts her eyes down. A nativity star is visible in the righthand corner of the photo.
    Camara Dia Holloway
    During the Harlem Renaissance, mother and child portraits and figure studies were especially popular in the African American media, signaling the importance placed on motherhood and the nurturing of future generations.
  • Ashley Makar
    This conversation about spirituality happened in the home of Aparajita Guha in Rexford, New York, on June 20, 2012. Guha, a practicing Hindu, is a family friend of Ashley Makar, who is a practicing Christian.
  • Sally M. Promey
    Among the material items that might occupy the pre-Vatican II American Catholic home, regardless for the most part of the occupant’s ethnicity or familial nation of origin, the last rites cabinet or viaticum (Latin for “supply of provisions for a journey”) asserted a powerful daily and nightly presence.
  • The rectangular swaths of color on a color field painting do not extend to the end of the canvas. A red stripe at the center lies below a larger section of yellow and above a hazy rectangle of orange.
    Andrea Pappas
    Strong, gestural markings in the central red band distinguish this painting from Rothko’s other mature works. This anomaly consists of long, gently undulating lines formed by gouging the surface of the paint all the way to the canvas before it dried. Straining out from a central point, the horizontal lines contrast sharply with the fuzzy, indeterminate edges of the other elements of the painting.
  • A busy painting captures a profusion of 19th century figures in one crowded section of the sunny street. Men dig trenches or toss back drinks. Women grasp babies, hand out pamphets, hold baskets of flowers, and stroll by with parasols.
    Tim Barringer
    Ford Madox Brown’s allegory of labor in all its forms is the most ambitious Pre-Raphaelite painting of modern life and a profound meditation on the relationship between art, religion, and labor in Victorian society.
  • Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Peter Ahr
    The internationally famous Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1789–1838) was asked to produce a series of colossal statues of Christ, John the Baptist, and the apostles for the new Neoclassical Vor Frue Kirke of Denmark. Of these, Christus (Christ) has become best-known. Copies of the sculpture, often true to size or even larger, can be found around the world.
  • Interviewed by Ashley Makar
    Ashley Makar spoke with Rabbi Jordie Gerson on October 26, 2010 at Yale University’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life. Rabbi Jordie Gerson currently works as the Assistant Director and Campus Rabbi at University of Vermont Hillel.
  • The homemade cover of a book depicts a young man reclining in a row boat as he reads a book. The background of the watercolor and ink illustration is a deep red. A set of red and black beads are affixed to the flat image as a necklace on the man's neck.
    Kristin Schwain
    Rolando Estévez Jordán, a visual artist, and Alfredo Zaldívar, a poet, co-founded Cuba’s Ediciones Vigía (Watchtower Editions) in 1985 to create an open forum for writers, musicians, and artists.
  • A gold border encircles a braided piece of hair arranged in an arc on a book page. Bows are tied on the hair tips. Handwritten script below reads, "Mother. Died Dec. 16th 1867. Aged 56 years."
    Rachel McBride Lindsey
    What photograph albums teach us about nineteenth-century viewing habits is that the reach of religion extended beyond compositionally “religious” subjects. Modes of beholding were often forms of religious practice that did not require a regulated rift between sacred and secular.
  • A wood-engraving depicts a woman sitting on a bench staring off into a grassy landscape with a house and trees.
    Sonia Hazard
    That “Protestants don’t have pictures” remains a common generalization. Yet in the early nineteenth century, nothing could be further from the truth. Protestant publishers like the nonsectarian American Tract Society (ATS) lavishly decorated their tracts with small but expressive printed illustrations.

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