ReligionsMN

During the summer of 2021, I worked with Michael McNally, a professor in the religion department, on a project he leads called ReligionsMN, a public scholarship website about religious life, history, and diversity in Minnesota. Professor McNally invited me to be an managing editor after I took one of his classes, Global Religions in Minnesota. I worked on a number of topics within the website, including religious responses to COVID-19, chaplaincy, Amish religious freedom, and an in-depth profile of a church in South Minneapolis home to both English- and Spanish-speaking congregations.

I primarily focused on editing existing work and bringing it up to a level fit for publication on the site (although many of the exhibits I worked on remain unpublished). A lot of my work involved getting familiar with Omeka and cleaning up metadata for images and permissions. I also got to refine my web design skills for public scholarship projects.

This project allowed me to explore the possibilities and difficulties of public scholarship, such as writing accurate and compelling material for non-academic audiences, engaging responsibly and ethically with diverse religious communities, and adapting the project’s goals and methods of presentation. While I was working on the website, Michael McNally and others were involved in producing four documentary shorts about Minnesota religious communities for Twin Cities PBS. I was not heavily engaged with the project, but it helped me think about opportunities for public scholarship in religion that use tools of digital media production and that are available beyond (or in conjunction with) textual materials. It also illustrated for me an example of strong public scholarship that was always in (sometimes difficult) conversation with the audiences it aimed to represent.