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AUTHOR, HISTORIAN AND THE “REIGNING SCHOLAR OF AMERICAN CATHOLICISM,” TO SPEAK NYS Writers Institute, November 14, 2013
PROFILE New York City is generally thought of as the very epitome of American modernity and so it was— but it was also a rich landscape of religious practice, innovation, and conflict. Virtually every major development in American religious history had, if not its origins in New York, then its most public and extravagant expression. Religion did not just happen in New York City; it happened through the city, in the media of its streets, shadows, and stoops, and in exchanges among people of all the world’s religions. New York has never been a secular city— or perhaps the religious history of New York demands a rethinking of what ‘secular’ means. This lecture invites a rethinking of American urbanism as a profoundly religious reality.
Orsi’s other books include Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005), winner of the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion, and Thank You, Saint Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1998), winner of the Merle Curti Award in American Social History from the Organization of American Historians. He also served as editor of Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (1999), and of Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts (2001). Orsi is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies of Cambridge University Press. He is also completing a cultural history of 20th-century Catholic childhoods in the United States, to be published by Harvard University Press. The Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University, Orsi previously taught at the Divinity School of Harvard University, Indiana University, and Fordham University. He is also the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and NEH fellowships. For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst. |