“Religious Visual Culture and the Conditions of Visibility”
David Morgan, Professor of Humanities in Christ College and
Phyllis & Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University
This talk explored what it is that makes something visible within the different visual fields that constitute acts of seeing. The presentation began with Marian apparitions, specifically asking what makes Mary visible in the wake of her miraculous appearances. Morgan will then examine several different gazes or visual fields in American religious visual culture, arguing that the study of visual culture needs to move beyond mere iconography in order to unearth the social constituents of seeing. The talk was, finally, an attempt to clarify the social construction of vision as an object for the cultural analysis of religion.