TRINIDAD RICO

Assistant Professor, Rutgers University

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Religion and spirituality have been scarcely addressed in heritage preservation history, discourse, and practice. More recently, increased interest in the intersections between the study of religion and heritage preservation in both academic studies and institutional initiatives brings to light some of the obstacles that the field has yet to overcome theoretically and methodologically. In this talk, I examine the entanglement between religious traditions and secularist forces involved in the production of heritage knowledge, archives and forms of expertise. I argue that the critical heritage turn has not adequately considered the legacy of secularism that underpins the history and contemporary practices of heritage preservation leaving the field of heritage studies ill-equipped to support the study and management of a heritage of religion.