Cultivating Spiritual Sight: Jacob Riis's Virtual-Tour Narrative and the Visual Modernization of Protestant Homiletics

While Jacob Riis has long been situated in the secular wing of turn-of-the-century reform, this study locates the aesthetic and narrative devices of his work within a neglected tradition of Protestant homiletics. Linking his stereopticon presentations to the allegories and interactive strategies of eighteenthand nineteenth-century sermons, Jackson demonstrates how Riis used modern technology to make traditional modes of religious pedagogy newly relevant to Progressive Era campaigns for social reform. Rather than distancing viewers from the plight of the indigent, as many critics have argued, Riis's photographs sought to convert audiences to the cause of reform by offering new means of spiritual and social identification.