
Research Resources
Readings on Material Culture
- David Morgan, The Thing about Religion (UNC Press, 2021).
- D.W. Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (Oxford University Press, 2019).
- S. Brent Plate (ed.), Key Terms in Material Religion (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).
- Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 2015).
- Annabel Wharton, Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
- Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images (Princeton University Press, 2011).
- Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Duke University Press, 2010).
- Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2009).
- David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Routledge, 2009).
- W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
- Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford University Press, 2005).
- Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity (Yale University Press, 1998).
- Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford University Press, 1998).
- Sally Promey, Spiritual Spectacles: Vision and Image in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Shakerism (Yale University Press, 1993).
- David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in History and Theory of Response (University of Chicago Press, 1989).
- Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, Second Edition (Routledge, 2017).
- Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Routledge, 2010).
- Daniel Miller, Stuff (Polity, 2009).
- Sarah Anne Carter and Ivan Gaskell (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Eugene Halton and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge, 1981).
- Stephen Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
- Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), Writing Material Culture History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
- Katherine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames (eds.), The Material Culture of Gender, The Gender of Material Culture (Winterthur Press, 1997).
- Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, Eds, The Object Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- Richard Grassby, “Material Culture and Cultural History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35:4 (Spring 2005), 591-603
- Lynn Rainville, Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2014).
- Suzanne E. Smith, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (Harvard University Press, 2010).
- Kami Fletcher, “Founding Baltimore’s Mount Auburn Cemetery and Its Importance to Understanding African American Burial Rights,” in Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed, edited by Allan Amanik and Kami Fletcher (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), 129-154.
- Karla FC Holloway, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories: A Memorial (Duke University Press, 2003).
- Kami Fletcher, “Long Live Chill: Exploring Greif, Mourning, and Ritual within African American R.I.P. T-Shirt Culture,” in Beyond the Veil: Reflexive Studies of Death and Dying (New York: Bergham, 2021), 208-231.
Archives, Museums, and Online Databases for Research
- Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion
- Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA)
- Hagley Museum Digital Archives
- The Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections
- The New York Public Library Digital Collections
- Digital American Antiquarian Society (AAS)
- Library of Congress Digital Collections
- The J. Paul Getty Museum
Journals and Publishing Opportunities
- Journal of Material Culture
- Material Culture
- Winterthur Portfolio
- Material Religion
- Body and Religion
- Material & Visual Cultures of Religion (MAVCOR) Journal
- Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts
- West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture
- Cultural Histories of the Material World
- Object Lessons
- The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950
Fellowships and Initiatives
- American Historical Association (AHA) Initiative to Support Teaching with Material Culture
- Smithsonian Research Fellowships
- Horowitz Book Prize
- Swan Foundation Short-Term Resident Fellowship
- Research Fellowships at the Filson Historical Society
- Research Fellowships at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon
- Research Fellowships at the Library Company of Philadelphia
- Research Fellowships at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
- New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
- Bard Graduate Center Fields of the Future Fellowships
- Grants and Fellowships at the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society
- Deerfield Summer Fellowship at Historic Deerfield (Undergraduate)
- Research Fellows Program at the Preservation Society of Newport County
- Fellowships at the American Antiquarian Society