“Save Us for We Perish: On My Relationship with a Woodcut Image,” American Religion 1 (1) 2019: 88-108.
This essay is a smudging or an exorcism—a chance to acknowledge a woodcut image’s strange hold on me and free myself from its grip. It weaves together two kinds of analysis as a result. One is contextual: what is this thing and what was its intended purpose? The other is methodological: why do some things attract or repel us as scholars and how does that shape our work? In the process, I explore the mid-nineteenth century transmission of Catholic media through the Holy Childhood Association’s Montreal offices, exploring the strange, transworldly globalism it sought to produce for its lay audience.
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This essay is a smudging or an exorcism—a chance to acknowledge a woodcut image’s strange hold on me and free myself from its grip. It weaves together two kinds of analysis as a result. One is contextual: what is this thing and what was its intended purpose? The other is methodological: why do some things attract or repel us as scholars and how does that shape our work? In the process, I explore the mid-nineteenth century transmission of Catholic media through the Holy Childhood Association’s Montreal offices, exploring the strange, transworldly globalism it sought to produce for its lay audience.
back