Mapping Religious Pittsburgh was an official WHC working group for the 2018-2019 academic year. The group met regularly throughout the academic year in the Center and hosted a workshop on November 2, 2018 with Dr. Rachel Lindsey from St. Louis University that showcased her work on the religious life and practices in St. Louis. Members of the working group went on to create the ReligYinz project.
The ReligYinz project is a dynamic, participatory, and evolving online exhibit that showcases the lived experiences of religion in Pittsburgh. Unlike traditional approaches to religion that emphasize doctrine and theology, this exhibition highlights the sensory, grassroots, and vernacular aspects of religious life in our region. Pages on African drumming and revival hymns showcase the sounds of religious Pittsburgh. Studies on Eastern European restaurants and bagel shops analyze its varied tastes. Images of religious icons and murals zero in on its colorful sights. This exhibit features religious Pittsburgh in all of its diversity and dynamism, and in ways that are as colloquial, unexpected, and quintessentially Pittsburgh as our second-person plural pronoun, yinz.
For each case study, undergraduate students research, photograph, and write about lived religion in Pittsburgh through course-related assignments that encourage exploration of their own interests. ReligYinz provides students with the unique opportunity to discover, refine, and share their scholarship on the many aspects of religion in Pittsburgh.
This project is made possible by the combined efforts of students, professors, staff, librarians, and community partners.
Principal Investigators
Aaron Brenner, MLIS, University of Pittsburgh Associate University Librarian for Digital Scholarship & Creation
Ben Gordon, PhD, University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor and Rosenberg-Perlow Fellow
Rachel Kranson, PhD, University of Pittsburgh Associate Professor
Digital Humanities Project Coordinator
Sai Koros, Department of Religious Studies
University of Pittsburgh Partners
Rika Asai, Department of Music; Joel Brady, Center for Teaching and Learning; Jessica Fitzpatrick, Department of English; Arif Jamal, University Library System; Jeanette Jouili, Department of Religious Studies; Paula Kane, Department of Religious Studies; Matthew Lavin, Department of English; Chris Lemery, University Library System; Boris Michev, University Library System; Adam Shear, Department of Religious Studies; and Alex Taylor, Department of History of Art and Architecture.
Community Partners
Brian Cohen, local photographer, and Eric Lidji, Heinz History Center.
Special Recognition
ReligYinz is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh's Seed Project Fund, the University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences' Curricular Innovation Fund, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies Development Fund, the University of Pittsburgh Department of History's World History Center, and Saint Louis University's Lived Religion in the Digital Age Research Fellowship.