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Angie Heo on Scent, Saints, and the Senses in Religious Life
June 22, 2026
Collage by Shira Friedman-Parks
Angie Heo, Associate Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, was recently quoted in the Chicago Reader in a piece examining how fragrance operates within religious experience.
The article, written by Leslie Hurtado and published June 19, 2026, covers a May lecture at the Church of the Ascension, an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish in Chicago's Gold Coast, where fragrance influencer Audrey Robinovitz traced scent through scripture for an audience of parishioners, perfume enthusiasts, and others drawn to the intersection of fragrance and faith.
Heo contributed a scholarly context drawn from her research on Coptic Orthodoxy and cultures of saint veneration in Egypt. She described how smell functions not only as a symbol but as a form of material contact with the sacred: when worshippers approach a saint's relic or carry home oil from a shrine, they bring with them, in Heo's framing, part of the saint's bodily presence. "You can think about oils and incense as portable vehicles of the saints' blessings," she told the Reader.
Heo also spoke to a broader pattern she observes in contemporary religious life. After years of digitally mediated community, she sees a turn toward embodied, sensory experience. "Young people are looking for something slower, more concrete, more structured," she said. "You can go to a virtual church, but you're not going to get the incense."