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.

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  Object Narratives

  Hans Holbein the Younger, Dead Christ Entombed

  Mia Mochizuki

  “Why, some people may lose their faith looking at that picture!” Dostoyevsky famously had his fictional character Prince Myshkin exclaim over Hans Holbein the Younger’s Dead Christ Entombed.
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  Object Narratives

  Skull boxes

  Maura Coughlin

  Skull boxes that both memorialized a dead individual and displayed the deceased person’s skull were made in Brittany from the eighteenth century to about 1900.
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  Object Narratives

  External Eyes on Jain Temple Icons

  John E. Cort

  These glass eyes seem to look intently at the viewer, seizing the viewer’s attention. This is precisely what they are intended to do by the Shvetambar Murtipujak Jains of western India; it is also precisely why the Digambar Jains of western India strenuously object to them.
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  Object Narratives

  The Virgin of Guadalupe, Extremadura, Spain

  Jeanette Favrot Peterson

  This Marian icon cannot be characterized as a single object as the perception of her authenticity, from which she gains her numinous power, draws on two distinct representations, one nested inside the other.
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  Object Narratives

  The Dolgellau Chalice and Paten

  Allison Stielau

  In 1890 two men working in the area around Dolgellau in North Wales discovered this pair of objects in a crevice between rocks. Encrusted with soil and plant matter, the objects were not at first identifiable.
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  Object Narratives

  The Cross of Motupe

  Emily C. Floyd

  Credited with saving the town from sure disaster, the Cross of Motupe became the centerpiece of a devotion that drew pilgrims from throughout the region, and eventually from throughout Peru.
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  Object Narratives

  Asher Durand, In the Woods

  Rebecca Bedell

  In June 1840, Asher Durand wrote in his journal: “Today again is Sunday. I have declined attendance on church service, the better to indulge reflection unrestrained under the high canopy of heaven, amidst the expanse of waters—fit place to worship God and contemplate the wonders of his power.”
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  Object Narratives

  Buddhist votive stele with carved Buddhist figures and inscriptions

  Kate Lingley

  This is a Buddhist votive stele made in the sixth century in north central China. It probably stood either in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery, or in a public place such as a market square, or at a major crossroads.
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  Object Narratives

  Benjamin Paul Akers, St. Elizabeth of Hungary

  Lauren Lessing

  Given the fact that Benjamin Paul Akers was a Protestant working at a time when nativist and anti-Catholic sentiments ran high in the United States, his choice to depict a miracle performed by an Eastern European saint seems peculiar, as does the popularity of his sculpture.
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  Object Narratives

  Barnett Newman, The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani

  Valerie Hellstein

  According to the art critic Harold Rosenberg there is nothing religious about Barnett Newman’s series of fourteen roughly human-sized, black and white paintings, The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani.
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  Object Narratives

  Mary Lyman’s Mourning Piece

  Jamie L. Brummitt

  Mary Lyman’s mourning piece served as visual and material evidence of her education, participation in mourning practices, and her religious and social formation.
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  Object Narratives

  Madonna of the Fire

  Lisa Pon

  Forlì's Madonna of the Fire is a large fifteenth-century woodcut almost twenty inches high and sixteen inches wide.