Writing a cultural history of religion at home

Abstract

This review article aims to reflect on the history of religion at home through testing the comparative promise of the Bloomsbury series A Cultural History of the Home. Through an extensive reflection on six historical periods of western history, the reader encounters key ideas about the historical-specific demarcation of the home, gender roles, and the domestic religious objects and practices that came to co-define those boundaries. Despite the comparative layout of the series, and the excellent contributions, A Cultural History of the Home never engages in explicit comparisons across the volumes, leaving space for future comparative work in the study of religion, gender and material culture.