Research Interests for David Morgan

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke. He also 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. His most recent book is The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (California, 2012). Other books are: 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 include: 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.”

Keywords:

Anthropology, Art, Christian art and symbolism, Communities, History, Material culture, Religion, Sympathy

Current projects:

The Forge of Vision: Image and Imagination in Modern Christianity, delivered as the 2012 Cadbury Lectures, University of Birmingham, England, March 7 to 15, 2012.

Areas of Interest:

Religious Material Culture
American Religions
Religion and Media
Art Theory

Recent Publications

1. Morgan, D, Religion in Plain View: Public Aesthetics of American Display, by SALLY M. PROMEY., Sociology of Religion, vol. 86 no. 2 (May, 2025), pp. 276-278, Oxford University Press (OUP) [doi]
2. Morgan, D, FROM LOGOS TO LOGO AND BACK AGAIN: Images as Transactional Objects in the History of Christian Devotion, in Selling the Sacred: Religion and Marketing from Crossfit to QAnon (January, 2024), pp. 17-37 [doi] [abs]
3. Morgan, D, Patriotism and Nationalism: The Face of Consensus: Mid-Twentieth Century and the Image of Jesus, in Visual Sense A Cultural Reader (January, 2024), pp. 207-213 [doi] [abs]
4. Morgan, D, The sacred gaze: Religious visual culture in theory and practice (September, 2023), pp. 1-318, ISBN 9780520243064 [abs]
5. Morgan, D, Agency, Images, and Visual Culture: the impact of Hans Belting, Material Religion, vol. 19 no. 3 (January, 2023), pp. 310-311 [doi]