Dr. Kati Curts
Saintliness & Science: The Composite Photograph in The Varieties of Religious Experience
Sewanee’s “Science and Society" working group and the History department were pleased to co-sponsor a talk by Dr. Kati Curts (Religious Studies) as part of History’s “Conversations Beyond the Classroom” Colloquium series. The talk was called Saintliness & Science: The Composite Photograph in The Varieties of Religious Experience and considered James's attempt to fashion a "science" of religion. Multiply exposing and superimposing his work within a layered history of composite creation, photographic rendering, and racial and religious theorizing, Curts argued that what emerges is a new image of religion and modernity—one of blurry boundaries, misty margins, and recondite relations—in which the personal and plural, institutionalized and individual, indexical, ideal, imaginative, and indeterminate, merge and emerge as a hazy history of constructed, grafted-together subjects. Re-viewing James’s conception of religion through the image of the composite photograph, this re-theorizes religion and history as composite. In so doing, it asks us to see anew not only the shadowy edges of James’s approach to “the ripe fruits of religion” but also how his composite conception might offer us a new image of the faded forms, categorical overlap, and continued cravings for classificatory purification in the study of religion. Many thanks to Dr. Curts for a thoroughly engaging and inspiring talk!
