Art & Religion at the GTU: Faculty Spotlight with Dr. Kathryn Barush

Department of Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion, Art & Religion, Consortial Faculty, Graduate Theological Union.

Dr. Kathryn Barush is the Thomas E. Bertelsen Jr. Associate Professor of Art History and Religion at the Jesuit School of Theology and Graduate Theological Union. Read more on her Faculty Page.

Why is it important to you that the arts be represented at the GTU? 

The arts are not only shaped by culture, but also have a role in shaping it.  That is to say that art can be transformative in many ways; for its powerful role in activism and social justice, for spiritual formation, and even for health and wellbeing.   Sacred art, in places of prayer and worship but also as re-contextualized in the secular space of public museums, offers crucial insights into the study of historic and contemporary lived religion, devotional practice, and popular piety.  At somewhere like the GTU which represents so many of the world’s religions, art can become a nexus for dialogical encounter. 

What’s your relationship with the arts? Do you practice an art form of your own? How does this influence your teaching?

A little-known fact is that I studied puppet making at an atelier in Paris, with the goal of ‘further illuminating’ (that is, to add a performative element) to medieval illuminated manuscripts and narratives! 

As an undergraduate, I studied fine art alongside religion and art history.  The process of making sacred art often yielded new insights; for example, discovering some of the underlying geometric matrices of Islamic manuscript designs or that Pictish carvings may, in part, look the way they do because of the way the rock yields to the tools used to incise them.

And yes, this definitely influences my teaching!  Most of the classes I teach offer the option of an art praxis option in lieu of a more traditional paper.  These projects engage other (extra-textual) forms of expression but articulate complex theological constructs…and they have been amazing!  For example, a Korean theology student who comes from a dance background choreographed & performed a piece that engendered a feminist approach to Mariology (the course was Marian Art).  There have been films, roadside shrines, mock-ups of meditation spaces, and other projects.  Another standout project came from a student going into chaplaincy.  She had a residency at a hospital at which an outdoor roof space separated the maternity ward from the area devoted to palliative care.  Thinking of liminality, transitions, and ends and beginnings, she created a labyrinth in this area in which visitors to both parts of the hospital have been able to connect, mourn, and heal.  

What are you currently working on?

My current book project is definitely influenced by my time at the GTU in its interdisciplinary and interreligious approach!  Each chapter focusses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another – from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to S. Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The places and projects are diverse and include vernacular devotional artworks and institutional commissions from artists and creators operating from within and outside the art world. 

Some of the artworks were created by Catholics as part of their ongoing spiritual formation; in these cases, the objects are brought into dialogue with notions of pilgrimage that are rooted in scripture and compatible with Church teachings. Many of the artists, however, incorporate a diversity of religious beliefs and ritual into their iconography and praxis, from aspects of Catholic popular piety to Bhakti theology to the honor given to the Apus, the protective spirits of the Andes. The close attention to context and experience also allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or ‘contact’ relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the ‘original’ in hierarchic terms.   

I have allowed the voices of the subjects to come through in order to emphasize their own perceptions of the idea of the transfer of ‘spirit’ from sacred center or landscape to representation. It is not my intent either to make theological claims, nor do I take a stance of epistemological skepticism, but rather to present focused analyses of these objects, assemblages, songs, and built environments as visual narratives and expressions of belief.  I aim to construct historically grounded explanations for why these cultural and religious artifacts and actions appear as they do, and how they can generate an embodied religious and spiritual experience for both maker and viewer. 

In other words, while place-based pilgrimage is an embodied and anagogic practice, as I argue, it can be experienced in its fullness through built environments, assemblages of souvenirs, and vocal chanting. In addition to the extra-textual resources, archives, diaries, and extensive interviews and correspondences with artists, curators, and their audiences buttress my claims; as do site visits and fieldwork conducted over the past six years; thick description rooted in contextual detail; and a judicious amount of autoethnography! 

What classes are you teaching in the Fall?

This Fall, I will be teaching two courses, Virtual Sacred Spaces and Engaging the Extra-Textual. Virtual Sacred Spaces will look at how the novel coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we have prayed, meditated, worshipped and even broken bread together as we have moved our sacred gatherings into ‘virtual’ spaces. This course will draw on collective resources to offer a space to think more carefully about composing sacred spaces as a global community. The online format is challenging in many ways, but can also be democratizing, offering a way for those with travel restrictions, different abilities, or health challenges to share in community events that would otherwise prove difficult. We will consider a number of virtual spaces including pilgrimages and pilgrimage sites, worship services, yoga practice, and museums and hear from those who organized and instated such opportunities in spring of 2020. Students will have the opportunity to create their own virtual sacred space as a final praxis project.

Engaging the Extra-Textual is aimed at PHD students who wish to engage extra-textual resources such as art and material culture in their dissertations as part of a transdiciplinary approach to the study of religion/theology. We will focus on various theoretical and methodological approaches to material sources (such as but not limited to iconography and iconology, aesthetics, social history, and biography) and consider the benefits and issues working with art and objects. Students will gain familiarity with museum archives and digital image databases as well as with the ins-and-outs of responsibly using images, including seeking publication rights and permissions. It will also benefit students of Art & Religion PhD students who wish to strengthen their knowledge of theory and methods in the history of art.

UPDATE

The virtual Glastonbury pilgrimage Dr. Barush collaborated on in July 2020 made it into The Guardian!

Learn more about the virtual pilgrimage and read the Guardian article.