A revelatory critique of public display in the United States.
 
In Religion in Plain View, Sally M. Promey analyzes religion’s visible saturation of American public space and the histories that shaped this exhibitionary aesthetics. In street art, vehicle décor, signs, monuments, architecture, zoning policy, and more, Promey exposes American display’s merger of evangelicalism, capitalism, and imperialism. From this convergence, display materializes a distinctly American drive to advertise, claim territory, invalidate competitors, and fabricate a tractable national heritage. Charting this aesthetics’ strategic work as a Protestant technology of White nation formation, Religion in Plain View offers a dynamic critique of the ways public display perpetuates deeply ingrained assumptions about the proper shape of life and land in the United States.

Sally M. Promey is professor of American studies, religion and visual culture, and religious studies at Yale University, where she directs the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion. She is the author or editor of several books, most recently Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice.

Note on Image Selection
Note on Hawaiian-Language Usage
List of Figures
Prologue: America by Design

Introduction: The Public Display of American Religion
Chapter 1: Conversational Assemblies
Chapter 2: Commercial Relations
Chapter 3: Testimonial Aesthetics
Chapter 4: Heritage Fabrications
Chapter 5: Material Establishment
Conclusion: The Limits of Display

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index