Search results for ""author russell t. mccutcheon""

"Religion" in Theory and Practice follows on from McCutcheon's 2014 Equinox book Entanglements: Marking Place in the Field of Religion by offering both an overview of the current state of theory in the academic study of religion as well as examining a variety of practical sites where critical scholarship is implemented but also challenged. Although addressed to early career scholars--taking one reviewer of Entanglements seriously by adding to the meager genre of books directed toward these important readers--the volume should also be of interest to anyone curious about why many in the study of religion continue to assume that their object of study needs special attention. The first section outlines McCutcheon's broader and more recent thoughts on the current state of the field (such as the claims, by some, that the field is now "post-theory") while the second section applies the first at a variety of discrete sites within the profession. These include how we approach teaching the introductory course, the work carried out in professional associations and conferences, the ongoing problem of contingent labor and what faculty might be able to do about it, the challenge of talking about what a theoretically-engaged scholar of religion actually does, and the varied audiences and readers who we can now try to reach with our work. Drawing on previously published, but revised, material for four of the ten chapters, the volume invites readers to step back from their own individual, specialized work so as to consider some of the wider structures in which the wider field exists and where all of our work is carried out.

Read more less

Fabricating Origins builds on a series of posts that originally appeared, in earlier forms, at the blog for Culture on the Edge. In these posts each member of the group focused on the problem of origins, examining how we repeatedly conjure up an authorized past that suits the needs of the continually changing present. Fabricating Origins presses these short studies further by inviting ten early career scholars to each work with Culture on the Edge by applying, extending, even critiquing the group, to further illustrate for readers how talk of origins in the present is so much more interesting that being preoccupied with long past origins themselves. The volume, like all books in the Working with Culture on the Edge series, is introduced and concluded by original, theoretically challenging but engaging essays. It provides a selection of ten main articles which draw on a variety of examples to make the case, followed by original commentaries on each, all of which are pithy but substantive.Although not a textbook, and while challenging for any reader unaccustomed to making the switch from origins to the discourse on origins, Fabricating Origins is especially aimed at the early career reader. The volume therefore includes an annotated set of suggested readings on how to rethink origins as the product of contemporary and always tactically useful talk and action.

Read more less

Entanglements attempts to argue against those who claim that scholarship on the category religion is only of secondary interest, in that it fails to do primary research on real religions. The volume collects eighteen responses, written across twenty years, that each exemplify the inevitably situated, give-and-take nature of all academic debate. These essays call into question the often used distinction between primary and secondary sources, between description and analysis. Published here in their original form, each contribution is accompanied by new, substantive introduction describing the context of each response and explaining how each shows something still at stake in the academic study of religion--whether its the rhetoric used to authorize competing scholarly claims or the difficulty involved in suspending our commonsense view of the world long enough to study the means by which we have come to see it that way. An ethnography of scholarly practice written mainly for earlier career readers--whether undergraduate or graduate students or even tenure-track faculty--Entanglements tackles the notion that some scholarship is more pristine, and thus more valuable, than others, thereby modeling for scholars earlier in their careers some of the obstacles and arguments that may face them should their research interests be judged unorthodox.

Read more less

Entanglements attempts to argue against those who claim that scholarship on the category religion is only of secondary interest, in that it fails to do primary research on real religions. The volume collects eighteen responses, written across twenty years, that each exemplify the inevitably situated, give-and-take nature of all academic debate. These essays call into question the often used distinction between primary and secondary sources, between description and analysis. Published here in their original form, each contribution is accompanied by new, substantive introduction describing the context of each response and explaining how each shows something still at stake in the academic study of religion--whether its the rhetoric used to authorize competing scholarly claims or the difficulty involved in suspending our commonsense view of the world long enough to study the means by which we have come to see it that way. An ethnography of scholarly practice written mainly for earlier career readers--whether undergraduate or graduate students or even tenure-track faculty--Entanglements tackles the notion that some scholarship is more pristine, and thus more valuable, than others, thereby modeling for scholars earlier in their careers some of the obstacles and arguments that may face them should their research interests be judged unorthodox.

Read more less

Fabricating Identities pairs early career scholars with members of Culture on the Edge, to explore how social actors identify themselves through their practices and associations. The book is arranged in a series of articles and commentaries that all press the model of seeing what we usually call identity as the result of a series of identifications-actions and circumstances that enable us to understand ourselves as related to others in specific ways. Changing relations result in changing senses of identity. With an introduction and substantive theoretical afterword, the book's brief main chapters make it an ideal conversation-starter in classes or primer for those wishing to rethink how we normally talk about identity.

Read more less

Religion in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to the questions about religion and religious behaviour that interest most of us, whether or not we personally identify with - or practice - a religion. Suitable for beginning students and the general reader, the book offers more than 60 brief essays on a wide range of fascinating questions about religion and its study, such as: How did religion start? What religion is the oldest? Who are the Nones? Why do women seem to play lesser roles in many religions? What's the difference between a religion and a cult? Is Europe less religious than North America? Is Buddhism a philosophy? How do we study religions of groups who no longer exist? Each essay is written by a leading authority and offers succinct, insightful answers along with suggestions for further reading, making the book an ideal starting point for classroom use or personal browsing.

Read more less

This collection of essays constitute an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused, study of religious practices. The basic premise of the argument, offered in the opening section, is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place and all their complex existence-that includes creating more-than-human beings and realities. As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, the second part of the book contains essays that address practices, rhetoric and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as "biblical studies," into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in the opening section. For a general reading of modern biblical scholarship makes clear the assumption that the Christian bible is a "sacred text" whose principal raison d'etre is to stand, fetish-like, as the foundational and highest authority in matters moral, ritual or theological; how might we instead approach the study of these texts if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun's Jesus and Addiction to Origins seeks to answer just that question-doing so in a way that readers working outside Christian origins will undoubtedly find useful applications for the people, places, and historical periods that they study.

Read more less

This volume presents an archive of remembrances of the person and the contributions of the late Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017). Section one collects previously unpublished papers from three separate recent scholarly panels (from the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the North American Association for the Study of Religion), in which a wide variety of scholars reflect on the impact Smith had on their own careers and the field at large. Section two includes revised versions of blog posts, many of which appeared shortly after news of Smith's death, in which scholars, journalists, and onetime students of Smith offer a more intimate and personal look at his legacy. The volume closes with the extended transcripts of seven interviews about Smith carried out with those who either trained or worked with him. Taken together, the volume documents the role Smith's work has played in the modern field while providing a basis for further considering the future direction of the field.

Read more less

Controversies over how to define the word "religion" have persisted for decades. It is a term of art and of academic study, but also one of governance, technologies, and of networks; it is a concept whose diversity is often its own worst enemy. "Religion" is as much a fuzzy set of conceptualizations and generalizations about a range of human activities as it is an authorizing system of persons, ideas, and practices. What is Religion?: Debating the Academic Study of Religion invites readers to eavesdrop on scholarly debates over the limits of, and uses for, a word commonly used but infrequently defined in a precise manner. This volume takes the temperature of the modern field of Religious Studies by inviting a diverse group of scholars to offer their own substantive contribution that builds on the shared opening prompt, "Religion is...". Their essays document the current state of the field and its various sub-fields, assess the progress that has been made over the past generation, and propose new directions for future work. Seventeen of the international field's leading scholars show how they work with each other's definition, or, sometimes, the lack of a definition. Of interest to students, scholars, and general readers alike, What is Religion? will provoke debate and provide insights into the state of the field.

Read more less