This interdisciplinary roundtable proposes to make visible a practice that many scholars of American religions and U.S. Catholic history regularly employ: the acquisition of our objects of study via eBay, the online market and global auction website, founded in 1995. Building on the AHA’s recent initiative supporting the teaching of history with material culture—and acknowledging the realities of a moment when our research and teaching are emerging from a global pandemic that has severely limited library and archives visits and research travel—the issues this roundtable will raise take on special significance for the 2023 annual meeting.

Yet the auction site has long been of use to historians of religion. As Robert Orsi suggested in his 2016 book History and Presence, “eBay has become the great repository of discarded Catholic media of presence from the pre-Vatican II era.” Roundtable panelists will each speak briefly about their experiences of bidding on and buying Catholic objects for new research projects, before turning to a broader conversation about the methodological implications of writing histories with material culture and the digital marketplace. What have we learned from our successful bids and failed transactions?

Together, we will reflect on bidding and buying as method, thinking about the circulation of these objects and what it means to purchase them as part of our research. In doing so, we consider site-specific collecting—gathering materials that document the histories of institutions and attractions—as well as object-specific collecting—focused on acquiring certain types of materials or formats. Owning these items also means touching, smelling, and storing them—how does sensory engagement shape and transform our historical research? What presences, relationships, and networks might we enter into as we touch or keep these items? We will explore value and how it gets assigned online, and how money and financial decisions structure collecting and archival decisions. What kinds of ethnographic relationships are involved in this kind of practice? How does the algorithm guide, limit, and structure search and collecting practices?

In asking these questions, we are committed to a conversation that invites not only scholars of American religion to the table, but also other researchers, public historians, and history instructors interested in building their own research and teaching collections, as well as the casual eBay user. Thinking and writing together about these issues since 2020 (and tweeting our finds with the hashtag #ebaymethod), the roundtable panelists have each chosen a particular set of objects from their current work to discuss and display at the annual meeting. From postcards and prayer cards, to rosaries and photographs, to a miniature model of the Holy Land, our finds on “Catholic eBay” suggest conversations about the role of researcher as collector; about the value of consumer items and other “devotional stuff" in the archives of American religion; and about the circulation of American Catholic histories in print, visual, and material culture.

We note that the roundtable includes 5 short presentations, but will reserve ample time for discussion and contributions from our panel's audience.