Description
Book SynopsisA chronicle of the emergence and development of religion as a field of intellectual inquiry, this volume is an extensive survey of world's fairs from the inaugural Great Exhibition in London to the Chicago Columbian Exposition and World's Parliament of Religions.
Trade ReviewExhibiting Religion is authoritative and will eagerly be read by all those interested in the relationship between the concept of religion and the geopolitics of modernity. This book is significantly different from virtually all treatments of such events as the World's Parliament, since the norm among contemporary scholars is to celebrate it uncritically rather than thoroughly historicize it, as John Burris has very nicely done. - Russel T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama, author of Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia ""John Burris's perspective brings a mass of information into a new focus, which allows him to build a frequently compelling argument about the broad cultural role industrial and cultural exhibitions played in the second half of the nineteenth century in the West."" - Gary Ebersole, University of Missouri, Kansas City, author of Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity
Table of ContentsInternational expositions in historical context; Britain's Great Exhibition - ideology materialized; social evolutionism and international expositions - a cultural history; exhibitionism, American style; exhibiting religion at Chicago's Columbian Exposition. Conclusion - a parliament for the world's religions?.
