Lillia McEnaney ’17 and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Seth Schermerhorn presented at the European Association for the Study of Religion (EASR) Conference. The meeting was held June 28 - July 1 at the University of Helsinki.
Following his contribution of a paper to the Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Erfurt, Germany, in 2015, Schermerhorn was invited to present on an EASR panel on “Performances and Mediazations of Indigenous Religion(s).”
He and McEnaney presented a co-authored paper titled “Through Indigenous Eyes: A Comparison of Two Tohono O’odham Photographic Collections Documenting O’odham Pilgrimages to Magdalena.”
According to McEnaney, the paper “investigates the ironies and unintended consequences of cultural preservation work within contemporary indigenous communities by juxtaposing intentional, preservationist, salvage visual ethnography and accidental preservation.”
The two-day panel was part of a larger research project, “Indigenous Religion(s): Local Grounds, Global Networks,” organized by Siv Ellen Kraft and Bjørn Ola Tafjord (University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway).
McEnaney’s travel and conference expenses were funded by the Kirkland Endowment and the Class of 1979 Travel Award, and through Hamilton grants from the Dean of Faculty, the Chaplaincy and the Religious Studies Department.
