Arts, Literature, and Religion Unit and Space, Place, and Religion Unit

Religious Landscapes in Art and Literature

Religious, or sacred, landscapes signify historically specific ways of representing place and serve as sources of cultural memory, ethical action, and social change. Religious landscapes are sustained or contested through ritual, pilgrimage, and festivals, and representations of these landscapes are preserved in museums, memorial sites, art, and literature. This panel will investigate the theme of religious landscapes in various artistic and literary forms from any time period and geographical location. Thematic approaches to this topic might include: contested landscapes; pilgrimage and the movement of bodies through space; the sacralization and de-sacralization of the landscape; myth and imagined landscapes; or religious landscapes and environmental ethics.