https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/publications daily 0.75 2026-02-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/aae1f3ed-4847-416a-a404-cbd1a8f0163c/9781032354170.jpg PUBLICATIONS - Religion and Contemporary Art : A Curious Accord 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1582226405216-4GD3B8G30QJE66172NYZ/RomaineWolfskill.jpg PUBLICATIONS - Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1581446112416-WLXIEZ2IUS8YWROWXU6J/RART_18_01-02-2.jpg PUBLICATIONS - Picturing Paradise in Nineteenth-Century British and American Art 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1582226714918-0KZKN3D0VMCGJGBZTVBS/ReVisioning.jpg PUBLICATIONS - ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1581446256149-A6FRN0BH6KCG4N5679GF/RART_18_01-02.jpg PUBLICATIONS - Christianity and Latin American Art 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. https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/past-events daily 0.75 2026-03-24 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/board daily 0.75 2026-02-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1581445550244-H34STKNAJDZ7QAR5379V/Linda.jpg BOARD - LINDA STRATFORD | President A historian of art and society, Dr. Linda Stratford (Ph.D, Stony Brook) addresses the ways in which the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion have impacted the reception of art. She has published several articles on French art in the 1950s, including her Millstone Prize article “American Art in France Following the Liberation” in The Journal of the Western Society for French History. She is founding director of Asbury University’s Paris Semester program where she teaches art history and French history. Her interests in the means by which artistic initiatives come to be viewed as belonging, or not belonging within the framework of a community have led her to question the largely secular methodologies in art history and criticism today. She is the co-editor with James Romaine, of ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art and co-founder of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA). Her publications and presentations address the intersection of art and religion in the works of modern artists including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Alfred Manessier, Georges Rouault, and Jean Fautrier. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1582906479321-2X9A9OOP1QVR68R8O2D8/James%252BRomaine.jpg BOARD - JAMES ROMAINE | Vice-President Dr. James Romaine is an Associate Professor of art history at Lander University. He is the co-founder of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA). His books include Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art (Penn State University Press, 2018) and Art as Spiritual Perception: Essays in Honor of E. John Walford (Crossway, 2012). He has an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College, an MA in art history from the University of South Carolina (thesis: “A Modern Devotion: The Faith and Art of Vincent van Gogh”), and a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (dissertation: “Constructing a Beloved Community: The Methodological Development of Tim Rollins and K.O.S.”). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1584387190490-IGJZMIEZNTMA0INQ3JWX/Ron.jpg BOARD - RONALD R. BERNIER | Treasurer Dr. Ronald R. Bernier is a Professor of Humanities in the School of Sciences and Humanities at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In addition to a PhD and MA in Art History and Theory from Essex University in the UK, he holds advanced degrees in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Scranton and Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. He also holds an MS in Higher Education Administration, and an MBA from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire. He earned his AB in Art History from Vassar College. Dr. Bernier is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues and scholarly essays, including “The Economy of Salvation: Narrative and Liminality in Rembrandt's Death of the Virgin” (Religion and the Arts, 2005), the books The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola: A Visual Theology (Wipf & Stock Press, 2014) and Monument, Moment, and Memory: Monet’s Rouen Cathedral and Fin-de-Siècle France (Bucknell University Press, 2007), and the edited volume, Beyond Belief: Theoaesthetics or Just Old-Time Religion?, a collection of essays on religion and contemporary art (Wipf & Stock Press, 2010). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/ee4a209a-e384-46df-9842-79a3a3b5c446/Hannah+Headshot.jpg BOARD HANNAH HEMPSTEAD | Secretary Hannah Hempstead lives in Oxford, UK and Head of Communications at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. She holds an M.A. in Art History from SUNY Binghamton and an M.A. in Historical Theology from Wheaton College. She is interested in modern and contemporary art, women artists, and themes of activism and social engagement in religion and the arts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/1581391389697-848I9YFDJA1JLUOA07EP/Rachel.jpg BOARD - RACHEL SMITH Dr. Rachel Hostetter Smith is Gilkison Distinguished Professor of Art History at Taylor University having previously served on the graduate faculty of the School of Comparative Arts at Ohio University. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, a participant in NEH Summer Seminars on Medieval Art in Paris and York, has been a seminar leader for artists and scholars in the US and abroad in South Africa, Indonesia, China, Italy, British Columbia, and India. Among the awards Smith has received are the Best Article of the Year Award from the journal Explorations in Renaissance Culture, the Franklin W. and Joan M. Forman Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award, and the CIVA Edgar Boevé President’s Award. Smith publishes on a wide range of topics in the arts. She has served in a number of editorial capacities, including co-editing special issues of the journal Religion and the Arts on Latin American Art and on Paradise in Nineteenth Century British and American Art with Ronald R. Bernier and James Romaine, respectively. She is Project Director and Curator of Charis: Boundary Crossings (Indonesia), Between the Shadow and the Light (South Africa), and Matter & Spirit: Contemporary Chinese Art and Society (China). She published the volume Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord (Routledge, 2023), co-edited with Ronald R. Bernier. Current projects include a book project on contemporary art and pilgrimage and an artist residency in India. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/34182b40-9438-4b6f-92b2-f03ee6de4a47/Jonathan+Anderson.jpg BOARD - JONATHAN A. ANDERSON Dr. Jonathan Anderson is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College (Vancouver, BC). His scholarship explores the interrelations of art history, theology, and religious studies, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary art. He is the author of The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art (University of Notre Dame Press, 2025), Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (with William Dyrness, IVP Academic, 2016), and many articles and book chapters on related topics, including “Modern Art” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2021). Anderson has a PhD from King’s College London and an MFA from California State University Long Beach, and he has previously held academic posts at Duke University and Biola University. For more information, see jonathan-anderson.com. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/eacee41d-b5dd-4f46-8661-8b2328b09d54/Ned+Bustard_.jpg BOARD - NED BUSTARD Ned Bustard is an award-winning illustrator as well as an author, printmaker, graphic designer, and art professor. He is the creative director for Square Halo Books, executive director for the Square Halo Foundation, and the curator of Square Halo Gallery. Some of his books include It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, The Church History ABCs, Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver, and Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups. Ned also created an art history curriculum for children called History of Art: Creation to Contemporary. https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/engage daily 0.75 2026-02-24 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/home daily 1.0 2026-02-24 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/upcoming daily 0.75 2026-03-24 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/paris2022 daily 0.75 2022-05-25 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/membership-information daily 0.75 2025-12-08 https://www.scholarschristianityhistoryart.org/store daily 0.75 2023-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e3b3ed6d753376b049eb9bc/aae1f3ed-4847-416a-a404-cbd1a8f0163c/9781032354170.jpg Support us Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord, edited by Ronald R. 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