Art is situated at the centre of human experience. It intersects with the human on a
multitude of levels: emotionally, sensorily, neurologically, cognitively, individually and
collectively. For this reason, we consider art to be a material expression of experience and
thus a plausible medium through which to assess the religious contexts in and through
which humans move. The proposed volume aims to facilitate a more complex study of art
through the conceptual framework of lived religion. Our aim is to create a high-quality
volume that will interrogate a multitude of sites/perspectives in which art and religion
become entangled and experienced together in the course of everyday life. It aims to
fruitfully contribute new and original thinking to the burgeoning field of the History of
Experiences.
We invite scholars working in mediaeval or early modern art history who are interested in
rethinking their materials through the lived religion lens to contribute to the volume.
Studies can focus on User Experience (how artworks operate as mediators for experiencing
the world spiritually/religiously); Artist Experience (how the process of making artworks
facilitates religious/spiritual experience); Documentary Experience (how artworks embody
perceptions, perspectives and ideas, or dictate ways of acting in or understanding the world,
and the impact of such visualisation); and Museum Experience (how contemporary display
strategies are most effective in relaying past religious experiences or evoking new ones). We
encourage chapters that move beyond Western and Christian experiences of religion and
art, but we remain tightly tied to the temporal parameters of mediaeval and early modern
(roughly understood as 800-1800 CE).
The deadline for submitting abstracts is end of December 2022. Once accepted, a rough
draft of the chapter should be disseminated amongst the contributors in April 2023 and will
be workshopped together in Tampere Finland in May 2023. The collection of chapters will be submitted to an international publisher following the peer-review. It is anticipated that
the volume will be published in late 2024.
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words in English and a short biography
including name, affiliation, and the most important publications, to
karen.mccluskey@nd.edu.au by Friday 30 December 2022.
Editors and contact information:
Dr Karen McCluskey
Visiting Fellow, Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences
Senior Lecturer and Discipline Head, History
University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney
karen.mccluskey@nd.edu.au
Professor Raisa Toivo
Professor of History
Lived Religion Team Leader and Vice Director, HEX
Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere
raisa.toivo@tuni.fi