A research project with Barry Stephenson.

Project site: http://abandoned.twohornedbull.ca/

Ritual sites have life histories. Such places include site built structures (churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, longhouses) as well as natural sites (groves, caves, rivers, plateaus, mountains) marked as special through myth and ritual. After they are conceived, they grow, undergo transformations, and eventually die. Sometimes they or their parts are recycled. For this project we will examines buildings and sites that have been abandoned or radically transformed. Abandonment does not necessarily bring down the curtain on a place’s religious significance or use but can instead be the first act in a larger, longer social drama: A synagogue becomes a mosque; a Hopi kiva, the centre piece of a national park; a city-center church, a thriving pub. Historically considered, religious sites and buildings have often been built by one religion and later appropriated by another. In addition, religious architecture, built for liturgical purposes, may be converted into a theatre or condominium. Like people, buildings can be “converted,” bringing along in the wake a similar sense of heightened emotion and dramatic transformation. The phrase “abandoned sacred” refers to the process of un- and re-making that sometimes overtake consecrated buildings and locales. Even when this process seems to propel a site from sacred to secular, “ghosts” and others sacral residues may remain. Using a combination of ethnographic, visual, and historical methods, we will examine this dynamic at a sacred sites selected to illustrate the range of transformative possibilities. Typically, research on sacred places has focused on statically conceived symbolic meanings of religious architecture. In contrast, our project emphasizes moments of change in the uses and meanings of sacred places, because studying sacred sites during moments of crisis and change offers valuable insight into the dynamic interactions of religion and culture.