News and Events

Rebekah Coffman will present a talk titled, "Claiming Place, Shaping Memory: Building Histories of Belonging." A historian, preservationist, and curator, Coffman leads the Chicago Sacred initiative at the Chicago History Museum. Her interdisciplinary work is at the intersection of religious identity, the built environment, and sustainability through place-based, community-centered approaches.

In 2019, she began the Sacred Shift Project, which is an ongoing international survey of urban religious buildings adapted for ritual reuse by diasporic communities. Her research has been recognized including New York University’s Gavin Stamp Award in Adaptive Reuse, a commendation by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, and Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum’s Lindsey Jones Memorial Research award.

Rebekah has contributed research and curation to exhibitions at institutions such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Historic Wesley Center; the Historic Chapels Trust; the Venice Architecture Biennale; the Plymouth History Museum; and the Religion, Art, and Technology Lab. 

This event is presented by the Department of Communication and is made possible by the generosity of Geoff Curtis '97 and Emily Sammon.