Speaker: John E. Cort
Denison University
One of the highlights of the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904 was the Jain Temple in the East India Building. The temple resurfaced in 1968 as the Temple of Luxor at Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. In 2008 the temple ended its third life as a feature of the new Jain Center of Southern California. This talk follows the complicated lives of this temple, from an object of imperial Orientalist display to a symbol of middle‑class American faith, and an object of pride for Jains in the U.S.