{"id":1200,"date":"2020-01-27T07:02:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T12:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entangledworlds.utoronto.ca\/?page_id=1200"},"modified":"2020-03-06T03:57:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T08:57:15","slug":"conservative-christian-futures-and-pasts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/entangledworlds.utoronto.ca\/index.php\/conservative-christian-futures-and-pasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Christian Futures and Pasts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Conservative Christian Futures and Pasts: <\/strong>Exploring Infrastructures of Sovereignty and Display from Toronto to the U.S. Capital<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Kyle Byron<\/a>, Saliha Chattoo<\/a>, Suzanne van Geuns<\/a>, and Christina E. Pasqua<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part I: <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Project<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the \u201cEntangled Worlds\u201d project, a team of four graduate students from the University of Toronto\u2019s Department for the Study of Religion conducted a one-week research road trip to Washington, D.C. Kyle Byron, Saliha Chattoo, Suzanne van Geuns, and Christina Pasqua are anthropologists and historians of Christianity in North America. Together, they drove from Toronto, ON to Cincinnati, OH through Detroit, MI. They visited the Answers in Genesis Ark Encounter theme park in Williamstown, KY with Professor James Bielo before making their way to D.C., and later returning to Toronto through the Buffalo, NY border with Canada. Along the way, they documented various sites of religious and national display seen briefly from the road or explored during intensive daytrips, curating their audio recordings, videos, photography, written reflections, and tweets into a Google map that retraces their route.<\/p>\n

Each day of the trip involved collective sightseeing related to the themes of the \u201cEntangled Worlds\u201d project: sovereignty, sanctities, soil. In addition to this focused collaborative work, each member of the team also conducted research at sites particular to their own dissertation topics. As such, the research trip was a journey across land and expertise, allowing each member to learn from one another in ways that their multimedia output catalogues \u2014 namely, through the curation of an interactive Google map and in the writing of ethnographic vignettes, which are included in part III and IV of this blog post. Before discussing how to navigate the map, it is important to first explain why a road trip to D.C. became the heart of this project.<\/p>\n

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As the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. is not only home to the infrastructures of the nation\u2019s political memory and identity (e.g., Lincoln Memorial, the White House), but it is also a cultural hub with galleries and museums that reflect the sanctity of both political and religious institutions in the nation\u2019s founding and future (e.g., the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of the Bible). Today, as in the past, Washington houses many of the artefacts and institutions that establish rule: of God over the people, of the \u201cUnited States\u201d over the land, and of the people over the futures they envision. This understanding of God\u2019s governance over the land, its people, and its public spaces is not limited to D.C., however, nor does it go unchallenged \u2014 which is particularly evident in the traffic between theology and sovereignty that this project explores. So, in moving across the land by car, crossing the border between Canada and the United States, this project approaches the capital as a web of meaningful connections that fan out across the North American continent and come together at this specific site. Layered with the writing such movement made possible, a road trip and the creation of map provide productive means for reckoning with the competing voices that lay claim to highway infrastructures, farmland, city blocks, and even the air space through which the research team traveled.<\/p>\n

This multimedia project draws on Hent de Vries\u2019 introduction to the volume Religion and Media <\/em>(2001) to help foreground the interdependence of secular and sacred media in public spaces. Such theories also inform the team\u2019s own use of audio-visual media as ethnographic entry point for understanding new and old forms of authority in documenting national history and religious identity, whether in museums, on the roadside, or in scholarship. Throughout the project, the contributors asked how the infrastructures of religious identity and affiliation appear amongst and in the form of purportedly \u201csecular institutions\u201d that are dedicated to the political history and national identity of America more broadly, while also considering how they depart from these cultural models these institutions put forward.<\/p>\n

The visual story that the logic of a map tells foregrounds the geographic proximity of these sites and the potential influence they might have on one another \u2014 the cultural significance of the national mall, for example, endows the placement of new institutions of display in that area (such as the Museum of the Bible) with a certain authority, meaning, importance. By including photos and written descriptions to pinned locations on a map, the similarities and differences between such institutions can be seen more clearly, as visual documentation makes it possible to compare architectural or exhibition designs, among other details.<\/p>\n

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Part II: <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Research Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\u00a0Left to Right: Suzanne van Geuns, Kyle Bryon, Christina Pasqua, and Saliha Chattoo are pictured here at The Garden of Hope in Covington, KY, where a 30-foot high cross and a statue of Jesus overlook the skyline of downtown Cincinnati, OH.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Suzanne van Geuns<\/strong> is a PhD Candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her research examines online instructions for how to be a man or woman in the right way, from biblical womanhood bloggers to \u2018seduction\u2019 forums for men. She is broadly interested in American conservatism, focusing on the internet as a place where truths that gender essentialists of various stripes consider uncomplicated and eternal are affirmed, explained, and put to practice. In addition to knowing way too much about strange corners of the internet, Suzanne enjoys trying foods that are so spicy she will cry, going out to dance, and peanut butter cups \u2013 truly one of America\u2019s greatest gifts to the world.<\/p>\n

Kyle Byron<\/strong> is a PhD student in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His research, grounded in the ethnographic study of street preaching in North America, examines the everyday labor of religious revival, focusing on how the promise of revival structures Christian life in the present. When he wants a break from reading and writing, Kyle enjoys rock climbing, eating raw cauliflower, and taking photos of his very cute cat, Pippin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christina E. Pasqua <\/strong>is a PhD Candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Book History and Print Culture program at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explores the politics of Bible translation, particularly how Christian publishing companies have embraced the semiotic codes and conventions of the comic book industry to disseminate the Bible as a visual text. Autumn is by far her favourite season, but her love for house plants, coffee, and chihuahuas persists year-round.<\/p>\n

Saliha Chattoo<\/strong> is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto\u2019s Department for the Study of Religion and a freelance food and entertainment writer in the city of Toronto. Her doctoral research looks at Pentecostal youth in Texas and the ways in which they negotiate their political and religious identities in performance-based conversion and ministry spaces. Saliha loves road trips, hates raw cauliflower, and never measures the amount of coffee that goes into her french press so that every day is an adventure.<\/p>\n

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Part III:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why a Map? A Note from the Research Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prior to our departure, the team discussed many different options for how we would share our research findings \u2014 from photo essays to a podcast series. In the end, we decided on a map.<\/p>\n

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The map serves as a kind of audio-visual ethnography that documents our research road trip from multiple subjective and multimedia perspectives. As such, the map is not only a means for us to display our findings\u2014or \u201craw\u201d data (e.g., a photograph of the Museum of the Bible serving as visual evidence of its existence)\u2014but is also a medium through which we can reflect on the process behind how we got to each site and what we saw along the way. The map\u2019s contents therefore offer some perspective on who we are as researchers, citizens, museumgoers, and friends. Put differently, the map is a testament to the kind of \u201cdeep hanging out\u201d that we engaged in, the kind work that Clifford Geertz suggests ethnographers do; it is a testament of our specific research process<\/em>, whether at the sites themselves or during the \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d moments that enabled us to think about and respond to the central questions raised by the larger Entangled Worlds project: \u201chow and why do attachments to soil matter?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The pins on our map only begin to provide some<\/em> answers to these questions, primarily through photography and written reflections that make such cartography possible (along with Google Maps). It is important to remember, however, as Jonathan Z. Smith writes, that \u201cmap is not territory.\u201d As such, our map is a construct and it is inhabited by our particular perspective. This perspective is layered onto an international map whose bounds may or may not be fully recognized by many various sovereign powers who also construct and maintain their own maps by inhabiting the spaces through which we traveled. In other words, the map traces our activity at very particular times and places that you may now interact with at your leisure.<\/p>\n

The geographic area covered by our research trip is quite large, so the map is best navigated in sections \u2014 i.e., zoom in and click on one of many \u201cgreen\u201d coloured pins for more detail. For easier and more direct access to specific sites, you will find the title of each pin listed in the side bar on the left side of the window. As you navigate the map, you will see that each pin includes a selection of photographs taken and curated by Kyle Byron and Christina Pasqua (with a few photos from Saliha Chattoo) and brief descriptions of our adventures, general observations, and historical context written by Suzanne van Geuns (with a few entries written and edited by Christina Pasqua).<\/p>\n

Some of the sites we visited were quite large (e.g., the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, KY), so we decided to include more than one pin for such grand displays of sovereignty and sanctity in North America. Doing so allowed us to provide a more layered perspective of the size, scale, and experience of these infrastructures and the soil on which they were built. The Ark Encounter, for example, has six separate pins, so you will need to closely zoom in on the map to fully access our documentation of it. The same goes for the Museum of the Bible, which has four separate pins that are thematically organized. A few pins on the map also include videos (e.g., click the title \u201cNoah\u2019s Ark: Exterior,\u201d where you will find a video recorded by Saliha Chattoo while she conducted a pre-interview with the research team before entering the Ark Encounter).<\/p>\n

If you have any questions as you navigate the map or if you see corrections that need to be made, please feel free to contact us<\/a>. For optimal access, we suggest using Google Chrome as your browser.<\/p>\n

And now, we present you with a visual tour of our research project:<\/p>\n