Vortrag von Rebecca Janzen (Columbia, S.C., USA): Mining Religion: Religious Sites and Extractive Industries across the Americas

Dritte Veranstaltung des Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquiums für Umweltgeschichte (BBC) im Wintersemester 2025/26, das zu vier Terminen von Oktober 2025 bis Februar 2026 einlädt. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt. 

Veranstalter: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam  

Montag, 19. Januar 2026 | 18-20 Uhr 

Abstract 
This presentation is part of a larger project called Mining Religion, a single-authored monograph that examines the complex relationship between Catholic religious devotion in churches and shrines near mines – looking at mining saints, and church buildings, and altars inside of mines in Oruro, Bolivia; Diamantina, Brazil; Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; Real de Catorce, Mexico. It situates this religious veneration in its historical context in relationship to booms and busts in mining and relates the popularity of certain saints (and not others) to support from government tourism programs, and the UNESCO world heritage program. The presentation speak to the relationship between the natural world, the mining industry, and religious practice and offer a case study from Mexico. 

The presentation engages with questions such as: what does the environment afford religious practice? How does the mountainous and desert-like space in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, as well as copper mining, relate to Huichol Indigenous pilgrimages, spiritual engagement with peyote, and Catholic pilgrimages? Moreover, how have the booms and busts associated with mining, and, more recently, tourism, affected the local environment and the people who live there? 

Short Bio 
Rebecca Janzen is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina – Columbia and a Humboldt Foundation Experienced Research Fellow at the Deutsches Bergbau Museum (2025-2027). She is a scholar of gender, disability and religious studies whose research focuses on excluded populations in Latin America. She has written four books about literature, film, religion and law in Mexico: The National Body in Mexican Literature: Collective Challenges to Biopolitical Control (2015), Liminal Sovereignty: Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture (2018), Unholy Trinity: State, Church and Film in Mexico (2021), and Unlawful Violence: Law and Cultural Production in 21st Century Mexico (2022).