Major Grant from Luce Foundation for MAVCOR

The Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (mavcor.yale.edu) at Yale University is pleased to announce receipt of a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the work of its second project cycle. Titled “Material Economies of Religion in the Americas: Arts, Objects, Spaces, Mediations” (MERA), this five-year collaboration temporally spans the ancient Americas to the present day and is multi-disciplinary as well as multi-institutional and international, assembling a cohort of 40+ fellows and participants at all career stages. Peoples, objects, and cultures came from Africa, Europe, and Asia to the shores of the Americas; and objects and peoples circle back to earlier places of migration or origin as well. To speak of the global economies of religion is to speak of interactive, interspatial material and sensory histories. Three summer convenings in the United States and Canada, capped by a 2022 conference in Latin America, aim to create ongoing international networks around the shared intellectual work of conversation, research, writing, and curation. Center director Sally Promey (Yale University) and Sarah Rivett (Princeton University) are co-directors of the five-year MERA project. Emily C. Floyd (M.A.R. ‘12, currently of Tulane University) is editor and curator of the MAVCOR website, a principal venue for project publication and curation. In addition to substantial support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, and Princeton University have generously contributed to this work.