Welcome to the American Religious Sounds Project blog. Here you will find an archive of posts from researchers, teachers, community members, students, and ARSP team members about their experiences with all aspects of the ARSP. The blog posts, written between 2014-2022, include reflections on teaching with the ARSP archive, responses to gallery exhibits, news stories and updates about the project, descriptions of recording at research sites by both scholars and students, and miscellaneous writings about religion and sound. The blog was intended to be a space for presenting ideas in progress, celebrating collaboration, fostering scholarly networks, and sharing innovative practices for incorporating the ARSP in teaching and research.
by C. Pierce Salguero
Pierce Salguero is an ARSP site coordinator studying the sounds of Buddhism in Philadelphia. He is also the director of the Jivaka Project Philadelphia, a multimedia ethnographic project exploring the role of Buddhist institutions, practices, and cultural orientations in the American healthcare landscape between 2015 and 2020.
by Shyam K. Sriram, Ph.D. (ssriram@butler.edu)
Butler University
The American Religious Sounds Project collection is now searchable through the Atla Digital Library. Atla Digital Library brings religious and theological collections from dozens of libraries, archives, and religious institutions together in one open access platform.
At the beginning of May, the ARSP Community Engagement Committee (Vicki Brennan, Ely Lyonblum, and Lauren Pond) participated in the Distribute 2020 conference, which was organized by the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the Society for Visual Anthropology. In a dynamic multimedia panel, the committee members presented some of the materials archived on the ARSP website and discussed the concepts that animate their plans for interactive and immersive exhibits about religious sound for public audiences.
Ohio State News has chosen to feature the ARSP's project on religion in the time of Covid, including some of our crowdsourced clips. In the time since they spoke to us about the project, the number of submissions has more than doubled.
By David Stowe
Professor in Religious Studies, Michigan State University
Having been involved in the first stages of what has developed into the American Religious Sounds Project, what excites me most about the latest iteration of the archive is its potential for use in the classroom. The homepage features a Teaching Resources pulldown that includes seven class activities.
We are thrilled to announce that we have been named 1st runner up in the category of "Best DH Public Engagement” in this year's Digital Humanities Awards!
Thanks to the DH Awards and to those who voted for us, and congratulations to the winner, "Representations of Cyprus."
The other winners this year were:
From left: Lauren Pond, Caroline Toy, Rosalind Hackett, Finnian M. M. Gerety, Alison Furlong, Amy DeRogatis, and Isaac Weiner
In November, the ARSP team traveled to San Diego, California, for the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting. Each November, the AAR conference brings together thousands of scholars, journalists, artists, publishers, and others from around the world for several days of workshops, panel discussions, and exhibits.
