McDannell, Colleen 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: University of Colorado, Boulder, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1975; University of Denver, M.A., 1978; Temple University, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, 211 Carlson Hall, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. E-mail—colleen.mcd@utah.edu.

CAREER:

University of Colorado, Boulder, visiting assistant professor, 1984; University of Maryland, European division, lecturer, 1985-88; Universität Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany, lecturer, 1988-89; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies, 1989—, professor of history, 1996—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from American Academy of Religion, 1987, 1997, and 2005; Quinney Foundation, 1990; University of Utah Research Committee, 1991 and 1998; and Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture, 1992; Hibernian Research Award, 1988; fellowships from Cushwa Center of American Catholic Studies, University of Notre Dame, 1991; Irish Institute and the New York Irish Roundtable, 1991; and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2000; Indo-American Fellowship for Advanced Research in India, 1992; Lilly Endowment project member, 1993 and 1996; Pew Charitable Trust project member, 1996; Fulbright scholar and John Adams Chair in American History awarded for the Netherlands, 2000; Dickson Distinguished Professor, Dartmouth College, 2003; Walter Capps Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2004.

WRITINGS:

The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1986.

(With Bernhard Lang) Heaven: A History, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1988, 2nd edition, 2001.

Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1995.

(Editor) Religions of the United States in Practice, two volumes, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2001.

Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

(Editor) Catholics in the Movies, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

Colleen McDannell is an esteemed historian who focuses on material culture in order to study religious life in the United States. Her book Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America has been widely praised. McDannell's thesis in the book is that Catholics and Protestants alike have a deep need to express their faith in physical ways, doing so by means of many different objects: vials of holy water from Lourdes; richly illustrated family Victorian Bibles; statues of the Infant of Prague and prints or posters of Jesus; and even "kitsch" items such as bumper stickers or Jesus baseball caps. Arguing against critics who dismiss such objects as unsophisticated or sacrilegious, McDannell considers them worthy of serious study and respect. As she noted in an interview with Public Broadcasting Service Web site correspondent Kim Lawton, "It's hard for people just to pray without a focal point for their prayers. Sometimes they use something as a mediator, so you have an image that might remind you of something. It's not as if they are worshipping the statue, but they are just using it as a communication tool, as a reminder. It links them to something beyond their own lives."

Writing in America, Kathleen S. Nash deemed Material Christianity "a significant book with carefully laid out arguments." Christianity Today contributor Richard J. Mouw also praised the book, writing that it is an example of "how to give careful and charitable attention to an important area of human reality. Such lessons are of more than academic importance. They are vital for promoting the cause of a gospel that has much to say about the transformation of our everyday lives." Christians, Mouw noted, "want to find concrete connections between the very ordinary details of their human interactions and the realm of the eternal. One need not be a dispensationalist to discern that a bumper sticker bearing a rapture message gives expression—apart from the specific theological content—to a profound conviction that cars and highways are not beyond the scope of Christ's lordship." What is more, the critic observed, McDannell shows that, contrary to much current thinking, "commercial interests did not create popular Christian culture; the extensive use of religious artifacts long predates present-day patterns of production."

Indeed, in her discussion with Lawton, McDannell emphasized the freshness and creativity that Christians bring to the material expression of their faith. "There is … a way that laypeople can express their commitments, their faith in colorful and diverse ways. Many Mexican Americans, for instance, will have beautiful home altars with statues of the saints, but then they'll also have pictures of their children and grandchildren and maybe trinkets that they bought at a fair, or some needlework that someone did. Even things that are not religious are put on the altar as a way of saying, ‘These are important things; these connect our everyday life with our religious life.’" There is "an amazing variety of religious objects," McDannell continued. "People are very, very creative…. Objects, like all religion, are very malleable. You can create them and re-create them and shape them into different kinds of things, but at some point they lose their connection to the tradition itself, and people no longer recognize them."

Writing in the Journal of Social History, Timothy Kelly hailed Material Christianity as an "exciting and provocative" work that "persuasively argues for a more central role for material culture studies in our efforts to understand the religious experiences of average Americans, and provides a fine model for those who wish to heed the call." Sociology of Religion critic Nancy T. Ammerman also expressed great respect for the book, emphasizing that its real point is "is to demonstrate how thoroughly religious practice depends on the interweaving of material and spiritual elements." This blurring of the line between the sacred and the profane, wrote Ammerman, is among the most important contributions of this book. It is not just that the weaker among us feel the necessity to substitute material objects for ‘the real thing.’ Rather, religion is always material, as well as spiritual, cognitive, and active."

Slightly narrower in focus, Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression examines the ways in which New Deal photographers documented religious life in America. Contrary to some historians who see a decline in religious life coincident with the economic decline of the Great Depression, McDannell argues that these photographs inadvertently reveal a resurgent vitality in religious life. The photographs document the religious engagement of Jewish dairy farmers in New England, Hispanic Catholics in the rural southwest, Pentecostals in the deep south, and African American Catholics in Chicago, and include rituals such as river baptisms and church services. In a highly positive review in History: Review of New Books, Charles H. Lippy, observed that "McDannell's commentary and her careful reading of the photographs indicate that historians have much to learn from the artifacts of material culture that sustain everyday life, even if this rich resource does not offer a comprehensive understanding of the role of religion in American life." Hailing McDannell as "a first-rate historian and a perceptive ‘reader’ of photographs," Patrick Allitt wrote in the Historian: "She makes you realize that the old saying ‘the camera never lies’ is itself no more than a half-truth."

McDannell has also edited Heaven: A History with Bernhard Lang, a work that Smithsonian contributor William Rice admired "for its readable, well-illustrated text and its fresh, immediate treatment of old theological controversies." In addition, McDannell has edited Catholics in the Movies, a book in which she argues that Roman Catholicism, rather than Protestantism, has served the movie industry as "the American religion." As she explained to National Catholic Reporter writer Shona Crabtree, "Catholicism is a profoundly visual religion, it has a long history and it has a hierarchical order. And so it's easy to use Catholicism as a shorthand for Christianity in general. It lends itself perhaps more than Protestantism to visual representation." In addition, Catholicism provides an "easy shortcut for mystery and the supernatural and the gothic."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

McDannell, Colleen, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1995.

McDannell, Colleen, Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

McDannell, Colleen, editor, Catholics in the Movies, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

PERIODICALS

America, August 3, 1996, Kathleen S. Nash, review of Material Christianity, p. 26.

American Anthropologist, December, 1996, Peter W. Wood, review of Material Christianity, p. 909.

American Historical Review, June, 1990, review of Heaven: A History, p. 773; February, 2006, Cara A. Finnegan, review of Picturing Faith, p. 221.

American Journal of Sociology, September, 1996, Penny Edgell Becker, review of Material Christianity, p. 644.

American Literary History, spring, 1997, Richard Wightman Fox, review of Material Christianity.

American Quarterly, September, 1997, Elizabeth McKeown, review of Material Christianity, p. 650.

American Studies, summer, 2002, Bryan F. Le Beau, review of Religions of the United States in Practice.

American Studies International, October, 1997, Marguerite Carnell Rodney, review of Material Christianity, p. 110.

Booklist, January 1, 1996, Steve Schroeder, review of Material Christianity, p. 754.

Catholic Historical Review, October, 1990, Carl J. Peter, review of Heaven, p. 813; January, 1998, review of Material Christianity, p. 149; January, 1998, Timothy J. Meagher, review of Material Christianity, p. 149.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 1996, R.L. Herrick, review of Material Christianity, p. 1811; September, 2002, W.L. Pitts Jr., review of Religions of the United States in Practice, p. 121; May, 2005, B.P. Chalifour, review of Picturing Faith, p. 1580.

Christianity Today, April 29, 1996, Richard J. Mouw, review of Material Christianity, p. 26; June, 2003, review of Heaven, p. 38.

Church History, June, 1993, Caroline Walker Bynum, review of Heaven, p. 315; December, 1996, Charles H. Lippy, review of Material Christianity, p. 793; June, 2006, Danielle Brune Sigler, review of Picturing Faith, p. 457.

Commonweal, March 8, 1996, Michele Dillon, review of Material Christianity, p. 25.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 1997, Meredith B. McGuire, review of Material Christianity, p. 235.

Historian, spring, 2006, Patrick Allitt, review of Picturing Faith.

History: Review of New Books, summer, 2005, Charles H. Lippy, review of Picturing Faith.

History of Religions, August, 1999, Catherine L. Albanese, review of Material Christianity, p. 79.

History Today, December, 1990, Pamela Tudor-Craig, review of Heaven, p. 50.

Journal of American Culture, September, 2005, Marshall W. Fishwick, review of Picturing Faith, p. 331.

Journal of American History, June, 1997, Ted Ownby, review of Material Christianity, p. 285.

Journal of European Studies, March, 1990, Alison Morgan, review of Heaven, p. 73.

Journal of Religion, October, 1997, Sally M. Promey, review of Material Christianity, p. 674.

Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, summer, 2005, review of Picturing Faith.

Journal of Social History, summer, 1997, Timothy Kelly, review of Material Christianity.

Journal of Southern History, May, 2006, Rebecca Sharpless, review of Picturing Faith, p. 503.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, spring, 1998, Margaret R. Miles, review of Material Christianity.

Library Journal, November 15, 2001, Michael Rogers, review of Heaven, p. 102.

New Republic, August 19, 1996, review of Material Christianity, p. 45; August 19, 1996, Paul Elie, review of Material Christianity, p. 45.

New Statesman & Society, March 15, 1996, review of Material Christianity, p. 32.

Parabola, fall, 1989, Peggy R. Ellsberg, review of Heaven.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 1989, review of Heaven, p. 2.

Reviews in American History, December, 2005, "New Deal Secularists and Images of Religion," p. 574.

Smithsonian, October, 1989, William Rice, review of Heaven, p. 226.

Sociology of Religion, fall, 1997, Nancy T. Ammerman, review of Material Christianity.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, January, 1991, Alan E. Bernstein, review of Heaven, p. 200.

Theology Today, July, 1992, John M. Mulder, review of The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, p. 289.

Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 1997, Karal Ann Marling, review of Material Christianity, p. 32.

ONLINE

Colleen McDannell Home Page,http://www.cmcdannell.com (May 2, 2008).

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (May 2, 2008), Steve Schroeder, review of Material Christianity.

National Catholic Reporter,http://ncrcafe.org/ (May 2, 2008), Shona Crabtree, interview with Colleen McDannell.

Public Broadcasting Service Web site,http://www.pbs.org/ (May 2, 2008), Kim Lawton, interview with author.

University of Utah, History Department Web site,http://www.history.utah.edu/ (May 2, 2008), faculty profile.