David Morgan
Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies
Education
Ph.D., University of Chicago 1990
M.A., University of Arizona 1984
B.A., Concordia College 1980
Overview
David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke. He chairs the Department of Religious Studies at Duke. Morgan received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1990. He has published several books and dozens of essays on the history of religious visual culture, on art history and critical theory, and on religion and media. Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity, based on the 2012 Cadbury Lectures delivered at the University of Birmingham, UK, appeared in 2015 from the University of California Press. Previous books include The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (California, 2012), The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America (Routledge, 2007) and two that he edited and contributed to: Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Routledge, 2010) and Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture (Routledge, 2008). Earlier works: Visual Piety (University of California Press, 1998), Protestants and Pictures (Oxford, 1999), and The Sacred Gaze (California, 2005). Morgan is co-founder and co-editor of the international scholarly journal, Material Religion, and co-editor of a book series at Routledge entitled “Religion, Media, and Culture.” Morgan is currently at work on a new book under contract with the University of North Carolina Press, entitled "The Thing about Religion: An Introduction to Studying the Materiality of Belief."
Expertise
History of religious visual culture, art history and critical theory, religion and mediaContact Information
Department Of Religious Studies, Durham, NC 27708
Box 90964, Durham, NC 27708-0964
(919) 660-3555
Links
Projects
The Visual Culture of American Religions. Ed. D Morgan and S Promey. Taylor & Francis US, 2001. (Edited Book)
Morgan, D, and Promey, SM. Exhibiting the Visual Culture of American Religions. Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, 2000. (Exhibition Catalog)
Morgan, D. Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production. 1999.
Morgan, D. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. 1998.
Icons of American Protestantism. Ed. D Morgan. Yale University Press, 1996. (Edited Book)
The Long Shadow of Vatican II. Authority, Faith, and Church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Ed. D Morgan, L Van Rompay, and S Miglarese. (Edited Book)
Pages
Morgan, D. "Finding Fabiola." Media and Culture: A Reader. Ed. G Lynch and J Mitchell. Routledge, 2011. 171-181. (Chapter)
Morgan, D. "The Material Culture of Lived Religion: Visuality and Embodiment." Mind and Matter. Ed. J Vakkari. Society of Art History, 2010. 14-31. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "Image, Art and Inspiration in Modern Apparitions." Looking Beyond: Images, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art and History. Ed. C Hourihane. Index of Christian Art, 2010. 265-282. (Chapter)
Morgan, D. "Seeing Nationhood: Images of American Identity." Powers: Religion as a Social and Spiritual Force. Ed. MT Borg and JWV Henten. Fordham University Press, 2010. 81-102. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "American Holy Land: Tissot in the National Context." Prodigal Son: James Tissot and the "Life of Christ". Ed. J Dolkart. Brooklyn Museum, 2009. pp. 48-65. (Chapter)
Morgan, D. "Painting as Visual Evidence." Using Visual Evidence. Ed. R Howells and R Matson. Open University Press, 2009. pp. 8-23. (Chapter)
Morgan, D. "Aura and the Inversion of Marian Pilgrimage: Fatima and Her Statues." Moved By Mary: Pilgrimage in the Modern World. Ed. J Hermkens and Notermans. 2009. pp. 49-65. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "Introduction: Religion, media, culture: The shape of the field." June 30, 2008. 1-19. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Images of the Passion and the History of Protestant Visual Piety in America." The Passion Story: From Visual Representation to Social Drama. Ed. M Kupfer. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. 131-145. (Chapter)
Pages
Morgan, D. "Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics. By Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. xv + 368 pp. $55.00 cloth." Church History 79.04 (December 2010): 922-924. Full Text Open Access Copy
Morgan, D. "Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650–1950. By James Emmett Ryan. Studies in American Thought and Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. xii+285 pp. $26.95 paper; $19.95 e-book." Church History 79.02 (June 2010): 483-485. Full Text Open Access Copy
Morgan, D. "God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World." JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 29.3 (2009): 538-543.
Morgan, D. "Religion and the Making of Nat Turner's Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740-1840." JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 29.3 (2009): 538-543.
Morgan, D. "Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America." JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 29.3 (2009): 538-543.
Morgan, D. ":Our Distance from God: Studies of the Divine and the Mundane in Western Art and Music." The American Historical Review 113.5 (December 2008): 1478-1478. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Seeing Things: Deepening Relations with Visual Artefacts." Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 4.2 (July 1, 2008): 237-238. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Paolo Apolito, . The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web . Translated by Antony Shugaar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. x+282 pp. $26.00 (cloth)." The Journal of Religion 86.3 (July 2006): 509-510. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture. By David Chidester. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xii + 294 pp. $50.00 cloth; $19.95 paper." Church History 74.04 (December 2005): 897-897. Full Text
Morgan, D, and Ivey, PE. "Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in the United States, 1894-1930." The Journal of American History 88.1 (June 2001): 217-217. Full Text
Pages
Morgan, D. "The Ecology of Images: Seeing and the Study of Religion." Religion and Society 5.1 (January 1, 2014). Full Text
Morgan, D. "Religion and Media: A Critical Review of Recent Developments." Critical Research on Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1 (December 2013): 47-56.
Morgan, D. "Religion and media: A critical review of recent developments." Critical Research on Religion 1.3 (December 2013): 347-356. Full Text Open Access Copy
Morgan, D. "The Emotional Technology of Evangelicalism." American Art 25.3 (September 2011): 13-15. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Mediation or mediatisation: The history of media in the study of religion." Culture and Religion 12.2 (June 1, 2011): 137-152. Full Text Open Access Copy
Meyer, B, Morgan, D, Paine, C, and Plate, SB. "Introduction: key words in material religion." Material Religion 7.1 (March 2011): 4-8. Full Text Open Access Copy
Morgan, D. "Thing." Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 7.1 (March 1, 2011): 140-146. (Essay) Full Text Open Access Copy
Morgan, D. "The look of sympathy: religion, visual culture, and the social life of feeling." Material Religion 5.2 (July 2009): 132-154. Full Text
Morgan, D. "The materiality of cultural construction." Material Religion 4.2 (December 1, 2008): 228-229. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Exhibition review: the critical view “visuality and the question of god in contemporary art”." Material Religion 3.1 (March 2007): 135-144. Full Text
Pages
Morgan, D. "The vicissitudes of seeing: Iconoclasm and idolatry." Religion 33.2 (April 2003): 170-180. Full Text
Morgan, D. "Spirit and Medium: The Video Art of Bill Viola." Image 26 (2000). (Essay)
Morgan, D. "Ambiguous Icons: The Art of Ed Paschke." Image 17 (1997): 31-44. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "Empathy and the Experience of ‘Otherness’ in Pechstein’s Depictions of Women: The Expressionist Search for Immediacy." The Smart Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (1993): 12-22. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "Sallman’s Head of Christ: The History of an Image." The Christian Century 109 (October 7, 1992): 868-870. (Essay)
Morgan, D. "The Allure of Electronic Media and the Study of Religion." Religion and American Culture 16.1: 7-13. (Essay)
Pages
Pages
Pages
Fellowships, Supported Research, & Other Grants
Research & Travel Grant awarded by Stichting Porticus, Amsterdam (2004 to 2005)
NEH Humanities Fellowship awarded by National Endowment for the Humanities (2001 to 2002)
Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and Humanities awarded by J. Paul Getty (1996 to 1997)
Pew Postdoctoral Fellowship in Religion and American History awarded by Yale University (1994 to 1995)