ASCHA | Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art
P U B L I C A T I O N S
Routledge, 2023
Edited by Ronald R. Bernier and Rachel Hostetter Smith
Religion and Contemporary Art sets the theoretical frameworks and interpretive strategies for exploring the re-emergence of religion in the making, exhibiting, and discussion of contemporary art. Featuring essays from both established and emerging scholars, critics, and artists, the book reflects on what might be termed an "accord" between contemporary art and religion.
It explores the common strategies contemporary artists employ in the interface between religion and contemporary art practice. It also includes case studies to provide more in-depth treatments of specific artists grappling with themes such as ritual, abstraction, mythology, the body, popular culture, science, liturgy, and social justice, among other themes.
It is a must-read resource for working artists, critics, and scholars in this field, and an invitation to new voices "curious" about its promises and possibilities.
Penn State University Press, 2018
Edited by James Romaine and Phoebe Wolfskill
Many of the most celebrated African American artists have created works that visually manifest Christian motifs and themes, yet this component of the history of African American art is often subsumed by attention to racial identity. Focusing on the work of artists who came to maturity between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Era, this volume constructs a vivid new history of African American art by exploring biblical and Christian subjects and themes in the work of such noted artists as Romare Bearden, Edmonia Lewis, Archibald Motley, Aaron Douglas, Horace Pippin, Henry O. Tanner, Jacob Lawrence, and James VanDerZee.
In addition to the editors, contributors include Kirsten Pai Buick, Julie Levin Caro, Jacqueline Francis, Caroline Goeser, Amy K. Hamlin, Kymberly N. Pinder, Richard J. Powell, Edward M. Puchner, Kristin Schwain, James Smalls, Carla Williams, and Elaine Y. Yau.
Read reviews of Beholding in CAA.reviews, Art History, and ARLIS.
Religion and the Arts 22, no. 1–2 (2018)
Edited by Rachel Hostetter Smith and James Romaine
Published by Boston College and Brill
This special double-issue of Religion and the Arts features scholarly essays by Ann Beebe, Naomi Billingsley, Chris Coltrin, Roger Crum, Linda J. Docherty, Margaretta S. Frederick, Gregg Heitschmidt, James Romaine, Rachel Hostetter Smith, Kathleen Stuart, and Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt. These essays, on a range of artists from William Blake and Asher Brown Durand to Hawaiian landscape painters and Damien Hirst, explore the elasticity of “paradise” as a concept for imagining a range of aspirations and anxieties, both social and spiritual.
Cascade Books, 2013
Edited by James Romaine and Linda Stratford
Drawing from papers presented at ASCHA symposiums in Paris, New York, and Philadelphia, ReVisioning explores the application of various methodologies of art history to the study of the history of Christianity and the visual arts.
Religion and the Arts 18, no. 1–2 (2014)
Edited by Rachel Hostetter Smith and Ronald R. Bernier
Published by Boston College and Brill
This special double-issue of Religion and the Arts, featuring more than a dozen scholarly essays on the multiple intersections between art and Christianity in Latin America, resulted from a one-day ASCHA-sponsored symposium, “Christianity and Latin American Art: Apprehension, Appropriation, Assimilation,” held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, CA, in February 2012. The ASCHA symposium was organized by Smith and Bernier and sought out scholars whose current research investigates the varied and dynamic art of Latin America and the rich spiritual traditions of Christianity in Latin American identity, probing the widely varied attitudes, influences, and applications of that heritage. They explore religious themes, narratives, iconographies, and sensibilities in Latin American visual culture in a variety of media and from a range of historical periods and regions of Latin America. Collectively the essays reveal the interconnectivity of faith, race, ethnicity, and history, as well as the various methodological challenges that these works of art – and their artists – pose in the history of art.