New Essay in "Elusive Archives" Volume Offers Perspectives on Studying Texts as Objects

 
I’m thrilled to share that my latest publication has made its appearance. 

My essay “‘Inscribe, Lord, Your Will in My Stone Heart’: Finding Religious History in German American Illuminated Manuscripts” is essentially a theoretical and methodological treatise that considers what it means to study Pennsylvania German religious manuscripts as multifaceted, spiritual objects that both delivered text and performed a certain ritual function in lived religious experience among Pennsylvania Germans.

The essay appears in the volume Elusive Archives: Material Culture Studies in Formation, edited by Professors Martin Brückner and Sandy Isenstadt of the University of Delaware, and published by the University of Delaware Press.  All contributions in the book are organized around a central task: “to consider a thing, especially an elusive thing, as being itself a type of archive.”  I argue that bringing the findings of material culture methods to texts--perhaps the most traditional kind of archive one can imagine--can prove very beneficial and open new avenues for analysis and interpretation.

I am always proud to be a University of Delaware alum, but especially in moments like this, when I realize just how fortunate I was to find myself immersed in an interdisciplinary scholarly community that values all sorts of "archives"!

To learn more about the book, visit the website of the University of Delaware Press: https://udpress.udel.edu/book-title/elusive-archives/.