Elizabeth Harper is mostly a theatrical lighting designer and associate professor of lighting design at USC. She’s also a writer and photographer interested in the cultural context and relevancy of the practices at the margins of the Catholic faith. Her writing has appeared in Image Journal, Hazlitt, Slate, Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable, LA Review of Books, America Magazine and Atlas Obscura. She contributed to Death: A Graveside Companion (Thames & Hudson). Her essay “The Cult of the Beheaded” was shortlisted for Best American Essays.

Most of her written work features her photography and her photos of incorrupt saints were included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s catalogue, Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now). Her speaking engagements on the subject have included talks at Cornell University, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Center for Inquiry, University of Winchester, and The Last Tuesday Society.