Dr. Kathryn Barush is an art historian whose teaching and research explores the dynamic ways that the arts can shape culture and community. She holds a D.Phil. and M.St., both from Wadham College, University of Oxford, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her recent book, Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience ( Bloomsbury) has been praised as being ‘well-written, creatively constructed, and accessible’ and for its multidisciplinary approach engaging ‘material religion, multiculturalism, history, pluralism, dialogical encounter, spiritual expression, disability, illness, dying, visual arts, and music.’ It was the recipient of the 2022 Art & Religion Book Prize through the American Academy of Religion and the Borsch-Rast Prize and Lectureship. Her current research, at the intersection of the arts and science, examines how art-infused pilgrimages can be used in integrative health settings. In addition, she is working on two new projects: an edited volume with Rachel H. Smith on how contemporary art can be imagined as a pilgrimage and site and a book project on plantlore and pilgrimage from the Middle Ages to today.
Prior to her current position, Dr. Barush was a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC where she contributed to a Mellon-funded digital humanities initiative. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the Luce Foundation, the Bannan Forum, and the George Greenia Fellowship for Pilgrimage Studies.
Dr. Barush is the founding director of the Berkeley Art and Interreligious Pilgrimage Project. Launched in the summer of 2022, it features pilgrimage routes curated by socially-engaged contemporary artists and scholars and seeks to link sacred landscapes the world over to neighborhoods, gardens, and backyards as a way to connect as a global community.
- Art and Pilgrimage
- Marian Art
- Engaging the Arts in Religion & Theology Dissertations
- Camino Ignaciano
- History of Christianity in 50 Objects
Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Culture, August 2021, PB 2023), 286 pages.
- Religion and the Arts Book Award, American Academy of Religion, 2022
- Recipient, Borsch-Rast Book Prize and Lectureship
Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790- 1850 (London: Routledge, 2016 PB 2019), 278 pages.
- Book of the Year list, Times Literary Supplement
- Finalist, AAR Best First Book in the History of Religions
‘Contemporary Art as Pilgrimage and Site: Ambrosio’s As Far as the Eye Can Travel Zine Project’ in Ronald Bernier and Rachel Smith (eds.), Religion and Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge), 2023.
‘The Ghosts of Past and Future along England’s Old Way,’ in Ian MacIntosh and Daniel Olsen (eds.), New Routes and Trails (Bern: Peter Lang), 2023.
‘Art as Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage as Art’ (with Hung Pham, SJ) in André Brouillette and Jeff Bloechel (eds.), Pilgrimage as Spiritual Practice: A Handbook for Teachers, Wayfarers, and Guides (Minneapolis: Fortress), August 2022, pp. 61-82.
‘The Afterlife of Becket in the Modern Imagination,’ Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. 173, issue 1, August 2020, pp. 204-217.
‘As coronavirus curtails travel, backyard pilgrimages become the way to a spiritual journey,’ The Conversation, August 2020.
‘No Boots Required,’ The Brooklyn Rail, March 2020.
‘Labyrinths as an Embodied Pilgrimage Experience: an Ignatian Case Study’ in Christopher Ocker and Susanna Elm (eds.), Material Christianity: Western Religions and the Agency of Things (Cham: Springer), 2020, pp. 197-222.
‘Mapping the Spiritual Exercises Along the Camino Ignaciano’ (with Hung Pham, SJ) in Eduardo Fernandez, SJ and Deborah Ross, with Stephen Bevans (eds.) Doing Theology as if People Mattered: Encounters in Contextual Theology, Crossroad (New York: Herder & Herder), 2019, 123-146.
‘A Pilgrim in the Park: Sacred Space in Lewis Miller’s “Guide to Central Park”’ Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring, 2013.
‘Visions of Mortality,’ Apollo: The International Art Magazine, Col. CLXXVII No. 605, January, 2013, pp. 56-62.