American Religion in 100 Objects
American Religion in 100 Objects is an initiative of the American Religion journal and leverages the momentum of an existing collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s Under Gods project, which marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence by spotlighting both the significance and the complexity of religion in US history. A curated, web-based collection of new work by academics, artists, and practitioners, American Religion in 100 Objects brings together a range of voices to reflect on what selected objects can tell us about religion in and around the US. A collaborative project headed by Cooper Harriss, Sarah Imhoff, and Kori Pacyniak, it both emphasizes the primacy of material objects as generative for telling this story and, through these objects, significantly expands the limits of what can and should be understood as religious in the first place. The project blends tradition and innovation, the familiar and the strange, through public scholarship that challenges and invites audiences to reconsider long-held assumptions about America, religion, and the resonant ways these two ideas intersect.