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David Morgan

Professor of Religious Studies
Religious Studies
Box 90964, Durham, NC 27708-0964
Department of Religious Studies, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Developing the Open Psychedelic Evaluation Nexus consensus measures for assessment of supervised psilocybin services: An e-Delphi study.

Journal Article Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · August 2024 BackgroundVoter initiatives in Oregon and Colorado authorize legal frameworks for supervised psilocybin services, but no measures monitor safety or outcomes.AimsTo develop core measures of best practices.MethodsA three-phase e-De ... Full text Cite

FROM LOGOS TO LOGO AND BACK AGAIN: Images as Transactional Objects in the History of Christian Devotion

Chapter · January 1, 2024 In this chapter, David Morgan proposes that images operate as transactional objects, connecting viewers to visual nodes within networks of images. To explore this, he examines the history of images of Saint Sebastian, a figure who has enjoyed veneration as ... Full text Cite

Invited Review: Collecting Data through Dyadic Interviews: A Systematic Review

Journal Article Field Methods · January 1, 2024 This article reports on a systematic review of journal articles that used dyadic interviews, also known as paired or joint interviews. The two basic formats for these interviews involve either interviewing participants separately or together, plus the addi ... Full text Cite

The sacred gaze: Religious visual culture in theory and practice

Book · September 1, 2023 "Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object-an image, a person, a time, a place-with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious tradi ... Cite

Agency, Images, and Visual Culture: the impact of Hans Belting

Journal Article Material Religion · January 1, 2023 Full text Cite

RELIGION

Chapter · January 1, 2022 Cite

The Visual Culture of Revelation: Visions and the Images that Reveal Them

Journal Article Irish Theological Quarterly · August 1, 2021 It is often thought that since remote, rare, and ephemeral events such as apparitions are not available to the direct observation of scholars, the question of their nature as events must be set aside in scholarly inquiry. This results in a focus on meaning ... Full text Cite

Archaeology, Heritage, And The Material Study Of Religion

Journal Article Material Religion · August 4, 2020 Full text Open Access Cite

In Conversation: Sensual Religion

Journal Article Material Religion · May 26, 2020 Full text Cite

Assembling inferences in material analysis

Chapter · May 11, 2020 This chapter seeks to model a method of material analysis that begins with an artefact, then moves outward from it and returns again and again, each time modifying the description and account of the object. As more and more comparative material is assemble ... Full text Cite

Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses

Journal Article Journal of Contemporary Religion · May 3, 2020 Full text Open Access Cite

A Generative Entanglement: Word and Image in Roman Catholic Devotional Practice

Journal Article Entangled Religions · February 1, 2020 Devotional piety broadly depends on events that are not accessible for direct observation and commonly offer little, if anything, in the way of historical documentation. Sometimes the experiences to which devotion is directed in the veneration of saints is ... Full text Open Access Cite

The lure of images: A history of religion and visual media in America

Book · January 1, 2020 This is the history of the relationship between mass produced visual media and religion in the United States. It is a journey from the 1780s to the present - from early evangelical tracts to teenage witches and televangelists, and from illustrated books to ... Full text Cite

Focus Group Reporting

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Cite

Image Acts: A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency

Other Material Religion · October 20, 2019 Full text Cite

Religion: Material Dynamics

Other Journal of Contemporary Religion · September 2, 2019 Full text Cite

Developing the Open Psychedelic Evaluation Nexus consensus measures for assessment of supervised psilocybin services: An e-Delphi study.

Journal Article Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · August 2024 BackgroundVoter initiatives in Oregon and Colorado authorize legal frameworks for supervised psilocybin services, but no measures monitor safety or outcomes.AimsTo develop core measures of best practices.MethodsA three-phase e-De ... Full text Cite

FROM LOGOS TO LOGO AND BACK AGAIN: Images as Transactional Objects in the History of Christian Devotion

Chapter · January 1, 2024 In this chapter, David Morgan proposes that images operate as transactional objects, connecting viewers to visual nodes within networks of images. To explore this, he examines the history of images of Saint Sebastian, a figure who has enjoyed veneration as ... Full text Cite

Invited Review: Collecting Data through Dyadic Interviews: A Systematic Review

Journal Article Field Methods · January 1, 2024 This article reports on a systematic review of journal articles that used dyadic interviews, also known as paired or joint interviews. The two basic formats for these interviews involve either interviewing participants separately or together, plus the addi ... Full text Cite

The sacred gaze: Religious visual culture in theory and practice

Book · September 1, 2023 "Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object-an image, a person, a time, a place-with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious tradi ... Cite

Agency, Images, and Visual Culture: the impact of Hans Belting

Journal Article Material Religion · January 1, 2023 Full text Cite

RELIGION

Chapter · January 1, 2022 Cite

The Visual Culture of Revelation: Visions and the Images that Reveal Them

Journal Article Irish Theological Quarterly · August 1, 2021 It is often thought that since remote, rare, and ephemeral events such as apparitions are not available to the direct observation of scholars, the question of their nature as events must be set aside in scholarly inquiry. This results in a focus on meaning ... Full text Cite

Archaeology, Heritage, And The Material Study Of Religion

Journal Article Material Religion · August 4, 2020 Full text Open Access Cite

In Conversation: Sensual Religion

Journal Article Material Religion · May 26, 2020 Full text Cite

Assembling inferences in material analysis

Chapter · May 11, 2020 This chapter seeks to model a method of material analysis that begins with an artefact, then moves outward from it and returns again and again, each time modifying the description and account of the object. As more and more comparative material is assemble ... Full text Cite

Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses

Journal Article Journal of Contemporary Religion · May 3, 2020 Full text Open Access Cite

A Generative Entanglement: Word and Image in Roman Catholic Devotional Practice

Journal Article Entangled Religions · February 1, 2020 Devotional piety broadly depends on events that are not accessible for direct observation and commonly offer little, if anything, in the way of historical documentation. Sometimes the experiences to which devotion is directed in the veneration of saints is ... Full text Open Access Cite

The lure of images: A history of religion and visual media in America

Book · January 1, 2020 This is the history of the relationship between mass produced visual media and religion in the United States. It is a journey from the 1780s to the present - from early evangelical tracts to teenage witches and televangelists, and from illustrated books to ... Full text Cite

Focus Group Reporting

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Cite

Image Acts: A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency

Other Material Religion · October 20, 2019 Full text Cite

Religion: Material Dynamics

Other Journal of Contemporary Religion · September 2, 2019 Full text Cite

Images at work: The material culture of enchantment

Book · January 1, 2018 Advocates of the ideology of modern progress and rationalism are fond of regarding human beings as rational agents and the universe as a collection of inanimate things that obey laws and do not exhibit agency. Yet evidence of nonrational practices of encha ... Full text Cite

The subject in question

Journal Article Journal of Material Culture · December 1, 2017 Full text Open Access Cite

Defining the sacred in fine art and devotional imagery

Journal Article Religion · October 2, 2017 Beginning with a definition of the sacred as a two-fold process of making things special, which consists of accentuation and affiliation, this essay proceeds to argue that things are made sacred in devotional piety and in fine art in parallel ways that con ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Visual Piety of the Sacred Heart

Journal Article Material Religion · April 3, 2017 Full text Open Access Cite

Foreword

Journal Article Christianity and the Limits of Materiality · January 1, 2017 Cite

Materializing the study of religion

Journal Article Religion · October 1, 2016 This response to Meyer’s work focuses attention on the materiality of studying religion and how the sociality of religious practice may be studied in material terms. The value of this approach and the manner in which it is conducted vary from more traditio ... Full text Open Access Cite

On the nature of collecting

Journal Article Material Religion · July 27, 2016 Full text Open Access Cite

Commun(icat)ing Bodies: Body as a Medium in Religious Symbol Systems

Other Journal of Contemporary Religion · May 3, 2016 Full text Cite

Missionaries and Idols in Polynesia

Other Material Religion · January 1, 2016 Full text Cite

Material analysis and the study of religion

Chapter · January 1, 2016 Discussion of the materiality of religion has become more common in years, resulting in a host of instructive studies ranging from the production and reception of objects, images, spaces, clothing and food to the study of practices, the senses and the hist ... Full text Cite

The Materiality of Sacred Economies

Journal Article Material Religion · July 3, 2015 Full text Open Access Cite

The long shadow of vatican II: Living faith and negotiating authority since the second vatican council

Book · January 1, 2015 With the Second Vatican Council (1962© 65), the Roman Catholic Church for the first time took a positive stance on modernity. Its impact on the thought, worship, and actions of Catholics worldwide was enormous. Benefiting from a half century of insights ga ... Cite

The Senses in Religion: Migrations of Sacred and Sensory Values

Chapter · December 1, 2014 What did the past sound like, taste like, smell like? How did it look and feel? How did people make sense of the world through their senses? These are questions which are increasingly capturing the interest of historians. ... Cite

The Image of the Protestant Bible in America

Chapter · July 21, 2014 Explore perceptions and interpretations of scripture in American politics, identity, popular culture, and public education Essays from the perspectives of American history, the history of ideas, film studies, visual studies, cultural ... ... Cite

Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties

Journal Article Journal of Contemporary Religion · May 4, 2014 Full text Open Access Cite

The Ecology of Images: Seeing and the Study of Religion

Journal Article Religion and Society · January 1, 2014 Full text Open Access Cite

Material religion's first decade

Journal Article Material Religion · January 1, 2014 Full text Open Access Cite

Religion and media: A critical review of recent developments

Journal Article Critical Research on Religion · December 1, 2013 This article considers recent changes in the definition of religion and of media as the basis for framing the study of their relation to one another and recent research in the intersection they have come to form over the last two decades or so. The history ... Full text Open Access Cite

Approaches to the Visual in Religion. Edited by Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati and Christopher Rowland

Other International Journal for the Psychology of Religion · July 2013 Full text Cite

Review of Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon by Martin Kemp

Other Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief · March 1, 2013 Full text Cite

The Look of the Sacred

Chapter · 2012 Cite

Finding fabiola: Visual piety in religious life

Chapter · January 1, 2012 During the sixth century Fabiola was canonized and since then has been venerated as patroness of abused women. In the second half of the nineteenth century, her cult was revived among European Catholics, leading the painter Jean-Jacques Henner to produce a ... Full text Cite

Introduction: Key words in material religion

Journal Article Material Religion · March 1, 2011 Full text Open Access Cite

Thing

Journal Article Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief · March 1, 2011 Full text Open Access Cite

Finding Fabiola

Chapter · 2011 Cite

The Emotional Technology of Evangelicalism

Journal Article American Art · 2011 Open Access Cite

THE ART SEMINAR

Chapter · 2009 Cite

God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World

Other JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC · 2009 Cite

Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America

Other JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC · 2009 Link to item Cite

The materiality of cultural construction

Journal Article Material Religion · December 1, 2008 Full text Cite

The Materiality of Cultural Construction

Other Material Religion · July 2008 Cite

Seeing Things: Deepening Relations with Visual Artefacts

Other Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief · July 1, 2008 Full text Cite

Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture

Book · June 30, 2008 The publication of Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture is a significant moment in the formation of this area of study, and sets a standard for cross-disciplinary collaboration and theoretical and methodological sophistication. Translated into Farsi, ... Cite

Image

Chapter · June 30, 2008 Full text Cite

The Sacred Heart of Jesus: The Visual Evolution of a Devotion

Book · 2008 This volume traces the unfolding visual biography of the sacred heart and shows how imagery documents the Devotion’s remarkable evolution. ... Cite

Re-enchantment

Book · 2008 Cite

Image

Chapter · January 1, 2008 The status of images in the history of many religions and in modern media is an embattled one and generally for a single reason: images are thought to be untrustworthy-they lie, cheat, and steal. Whether in Socrates or in the many critiques of images mount ... Full text Cite

Introduction Religion, media, culture: the shape of the field

Book · January 1, 2008 In recent years, mediation has come to be studied as a range of religious practices in different cultural settings and historical periods around the world. The assumption at work in social and cultural criticism, theology, and mass communication studies be ... Full text Cite

Exhibition review: The critical view

Journal Article Material Religion · December 1, 2007 Full text Cite

Materiality

Other Encyclopedia of Missions and Missionaries · 2007 Cite

Kimsooja and the Discipline of Looking

Other Curator: the Museum journal · 2006 Link to item Cite

Forum: Electronic media and the study of American religion

Journal Article Religion and American Culture · January 1, 2006 Full text Cite

The sacred gaze: Religious visual culture in theory and practice

Book · May 31, 2005 "Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object-an image, a person, a time, a place-with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious tradi ... Cite

Absent Fathers and Women with Beards: Religion and Gender in Popular Imagery of the Nineteenth Century

Chapter · 2005 Illustrated throughout, the book combines a wide range of critical approaches and is made up of new essays by internationally renowned scholars. ... Cite

Response to spackman, "reconsidering 'kitsch'"

Journal Article Material Religion · January 1, 2005 Full text Cite

The Image of the Image of the Image

Other Image · June 2004 Cite

Focus Groups

Chapter · January 1, 2004 Full text Cite

The Visual Culture of American Religions

Book · 2001 These essays challenge this tension by investigating their long-standing relationship from the early-19th century to the present day. ... Cite

Visual religion

Journal Article Religion · January 1, 2000 Full text Cite

Domestic devotion and ritual: Visual piety in the modern American home

Journal Article Art Journal · January 1, 1998 In the sound and fury of recent “culture wars,” religion has often been reduced to the “religious right,” an audible, media-savvy, politically active slice of American Protestantism that emerged during the Reagan years. But religious life in the United Sta ... Full text Cite

Icons of American Protestantism

Book · 1996 This fascinating book focuses on the production, marketing, and reception of one such set of religious illustrations, the art of Warner Sallman (1892-1968), whose '1940 Head Of Christ' has been reproduced an estimated five hundred million ... ... Cite

Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman

Journal Article Religion and American Culture · January 1, 1993 Full text Cite

Sallman’s Head of Christ: The History of an Image

Other The Christian Century · October 7, 1992 Cite