MAVCOR: New Digital Publication

http://mavcor.yale.edu/

Many readers may already be familiar with Yale University's longstanding Initiative for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (MAVCOR). Since 2008 the project has convened conferences, curated exhibitions, and supported research on the impact art, mass production, and materiality have on religious communities and religious expressions. Results from the project's first phase on the senses is set to be published this summer by Yale University Press as an edited collection. Titled Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, the collection will be edited by Sally M. Promey and promises to be an important resources with over thirty essays by some of the leading scholars in the field.

And as MAVCOR moves into its next phase, the project recently launched a completely revamped website. More than just place to announce the initiative's ongoing publications and events, the new MAVCOR has become an additional space for the project's resources, publications, and debates. An every-growing Archive of religious materiality allows users to submit images both iconic and quotidian;  guest-curated exhibits (called Constellations) utilizing objects from the archive; and an expansive series of Conversations feature essays and interveiws on issues and methods in the study of material and visual culture. The entire endeavor is now online and open to others in the field to contribute to. The project as a whole is a fantastic resources, but it also serves as an exemplary model of the kind of mutli-modal publication scholars can take advantage of in this digital age.