Download or read book Reading J Z Smith written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of a career of more than forty years, Jonathan Z. Smith was among the most important voices of critical reflection within the academic study of religion, distinguishing himself as perhaps the most influential theorist of religion of the last half century. Among his significant body of work are essays and lectures on teaching and the essential role of academic scholarship on religion in matters of education and public policy. The interviews and essay published here display something of the dynamic, thinking-on-his feet liveliness that Smith brought to questions about the study of religion, his theoretical preferences, and his methods of teaching. With refreshing candidness and clarity, Reading J.Z. Smith offers an often provocative introduction to discussions on issues that still dominate the complex and continually changing critical conversations in the academic study of religion.
Download or read book On Teaching Religion written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Teaching Religion collects the best of Jonathan Z. Smith's essays and lectures into one volume.
Download or read book Imagining Religion written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of historically and geographically situated human ingenuity, cognition, and curiosity—simply put, as the result of human labor, one of the decisive but wholly ordinary ways human beings create the worlds in which they live and make sense of them. "These seven essays . . . display the critical intelligence, creativity, and sheer common sense that make Smith one of the most methodologically sophisticated and suggestive historians of religion writing today. . . . Smith scrutinizes the fundamental problems of taxonomy and comparison in religious studies, suggestively redescribes such basic categories as canon and ritual, and shows how frequently studied myths may more likely reflect situational incongruities than vaunted mimetic congruities. His final essay, on Jonestown, demonstrates the interpretive power of the historian of religion to render intelligible that in our own day which seems most bizarre."—Richard S. Sarason, Religious Studies Review
Download or read book Relating Religion written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-11-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most influential theorists of religion, Jonathan Z. Smith is best known for his analyses of religious studies as a discipline and for his advocacy and refinement of comparison as the basis for the history of religions. Relating Religion gathers seventeen essays—four of them never before published—that together provide the first broad overview of Smith's thinking since his seminal 1982 book, Imagining Religion. Smith first explains how he was drawn to the study of religion, outlines his own theoretical commitments, and draws the connections between his thinking and his concerns for general education. He then engages several figures and traditions that serve to define his interests within the larger setting of the discipline. The essays that follow consider the role of taxonomy and classification in the study of religion, the construction of difference, and the procedures of generalization and redescription that Smith takes to be key to the comparative enterprise. The final essays deploy features of Smith's most recent work, especially the notion of translation. Heady, original, and provocative, Relating Religion is certain to be hailed as a landmark in the academic study and critical theory of religion.
Download or read book Map Is Not Territory written by Jonathan Z Smith and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-07-17 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book To Take Place written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this broad-ranging inquiry into ritual and its relation to place, Jonathan Z. Smith prepares the way for a new approach to the comparative study of religion. Smith stresses the importance of place—in particular, constructed ritual environments—to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. He structures his argument around the territories of the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia and two sites in Jerusalem—the temple envisioned by Ezekiel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first of these locales—the focus of one of the more important contemporary theories of religious ritual—allows Smith to raise questions concerning the enterprise of comparison. His close examination of Eliade's influential interpretation of the Tjilpa tradition leads to a powerful critique of the approach to religion, myth, and ritual that begins with cosmology and the category of "The Sacred." In substance and in method, To Take Place represents a significant advance toward a theory of ritual. It is of great value not only to historians of religion and students of ritual, but to all, whether social scientists or humanists, who are concerned with the nature of place. "This book is extraordinarily stimulating in prompting one to think about the ways in which space, or place, is perceived, marked, and utilized religiously. . . . A provocative example of the application of humanistic geography to our understanding of what takes place in religion."—Dale Goldsmith, Interpretation
Download or read book Remembering J Z Smith written by Emily D. Crews and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents an archive of remembrances of the person and the contributions of the late Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017)-the long-time University of Chicago faculty member who was one of the world's most influential scholars of religion. Part I 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. Part II includes revised versions of blog posts, many of which appeared shortly after news of Smith's death, in which scholars, journalists, and former students of Smith offer a more intimate and personal look at his legacy. Part III features extended transcripts of seven interviews about Smith carried out with those who either trained or worked with him. The volume closes with an afterword by Emily D. Crews, along with a previously unpublished essay of Smith's own. Taken together, the volume documents the role Smith's work has played in the modern study of religion while providing a basis for further considering the future direction of the field.While of interest to scholars who either knew Smith or those who are already familiar with his work, this volume will also be helpful to newcomers to Smith's writings, read alongside his own essays, as a way to deepen their understanding of the modern study of religion-its history, its methods, and how to teach it.
Download or read book Critical Terms for Religious Studies written by Mark C. Taylor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century that began with modernism sweeping across Europe is ending with a remarkable resurgence of religious beliefs and practices throughout the world. Wherever one looks today, from headlines about political turmoil in the Middle East to pop music and videos, one cannot escape the pivotal role of religious beliefs and practices in shaping selves, societies, and cultures. Following in the very successful tradition of Critical Terms for Literary Studies and Critical Terms for Art History, this book attempts to provide a revitalized, self-aware vocabulary with which this bewildering religious diversity can be accurately described and responsibly discussed. Leading scholars working in a variety of traditions demonstrate through their incisive discussions that even our most basic terms for understanding religion are not neutral but carry specific historical and conceptual freight. These essays adopt the approach that has won this book's predecessors such widespread acclaim: each provides a concise history of a critical term, explores the issues raised by the term, and puts the term to use in an analysis of a religious work, practice, or event. Moving across Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Native American and Mayan religions, contributors explore terms ranging from experience, territory, and image, to God, sacrifice, and transgression. The result is an essential reference that will reshape the field of religious studies and transform the way in which religion is understood by scholars from all disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, gender studies, and literary studies.
Download or read book The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by Harper San Francisco. This book was released on 1996 with total page 1154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers more than three thousand articles on the world of religion.
Download or read book Irreverence and the Sacred written by Hugh Urban and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irreverence and the Sacred brings together some of the most cutting edge, interdisciplinary, and international scholars working today in order to debate key issues in the critical and comparative study of religion. The project is inspired in large part by the work of Bruce Lincoln, whose influential and wide-ranging scholarship has consistently posed challenging, provocative, and often-irreverent questions that have really pushed the boundaries of the field of religious studies in important, sometimes controversial ways. Retracing the history of the discipline of religious studies, Lincoln argues that the field has tended to champion a "validating, feel-good" approach to religion, rather than posing more critical questions about religious claims to authority and their role in history, politics, and social change. A critical approach to the history of religions, he suggests, would focus on the human, temporal, and material aspects of phenomena that are claimed to have a superhuman, eternal, or transcendent status. This volume takes up Lincoln's challenge to "do better," by engaging in critical analyses of four key themes in the study of religion: myth, ritual, gender, and politics. The book also interrogates the "politics of scholarship" itself, critically examining the relations of power and material interests at work in the study as well as the practice of religion. The scholars involved in this project include not only some of the most important figures in the American study of religion--such as Wendy Doniger, Russell McCutcheon, Ivan Strenski, and Lincoln himself--but also European scholars whose work is hugely influential overseas but not as well known in the U.S.--such as Stefan Arvidsson, Claude Calame, Nicolas Meylan, and others.
Download or read book Say What Your Longing Heart Desires written by Niloofar Haeri and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the 1979 revolution, the Iranian government set out to Islamize society. Muslim piety had to be visible, in personal appearance and in action. Iranians were told to pray, fast, and attend mosques to be true Muslims. The revolution turned questions of what it means to be a true Muslim into a matter of public debate, taken up widely outside the exclusive realm of male clerics and intellectuals. Say What Your Longing Heart Desires offers an elegant ethnography of these debates among a group of educated, middle-class women whose voices are often muted in studies of Islam. Niloofar Haeri follows them in their daily lives as they engage with the classical poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Saadi, illuminating a long-standing mutual inspiration between prayer and poetry. She recounts how different forms of prayer may transform into dialogues with God, and, in turn, Haeri illuminates the ways in which believers draw on prayer and ritual acts as the emotional and intellectual material through which they think, deliberate, and debate.
Download or read book The Meaning and End of Religion written by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, maintained in this vastly important work that Westerners have misperceived religious life by making "religion" into one thing. He shows the inadequacy of "religion" to capture the living, endlessly variable ways and traditions in which religious faith presents itself in the world.
Download or read book The Question of the Animal and Religion written by Aaron S. Gross and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an absorbing investigation into recent, high-profile scandals involving one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses in the world, located unexpectedly in Postville, Iowa, Aaron S. Gross makes a powerful case for elevating the category of the animal in the study of religion. Major theorists have almost without exception approached religion as a phenomenon that radically marks humans off from other animals, but Gross rejects this paradigm, instead matching religion more closely with the life sciences to better theorize human nature. Gross begins with a detailed account of the scandals at Agriprocessors and their significance for the American and international Jewish community. He argues that without a proper theorization of "animals and religion," we cannot fully understand religiously and ethically motivated diets and how and why the events at Agriprocessors took place. Subsequent chapters recognize the significance of animals to the study of religion in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Jacques Derrida and the value of indigenous peoples' understanding of animals to the study of religion in our daily lives. Gross concludes by extending the Agribusiness scandal to the activities at slaughterhouses of all kinds, calling attention to the religiosity informing the regulation of "secular" slaughterhouses and its implications for our relationship with and self-imagination through animals.
Download or read book Adam Smith in His Time and Ours written by Jerry Z. Muller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-07-23 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed, Jerry Muller shows that the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations maintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest. Smith's analysis went beyond economics to embrace a larger "civilizing project" designed to create a more decent society.
Download or read book Encountering Religion written by Tyler T. Roberts and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyler Roberts encourages scholars to abandon rigid conceptual oppositions between "secular" and "religious" to better understand how human beings actively and thoughtfully engage with their worlds and make meaning. The artificial distinction between a self-conscious and critical "academic study of religion" and an ideological and authoritarian "religion," he argues, only obscures the phenomenon. Instead, Roberts calls on intellectuals to approach the field as a site of "encounter" and "response," illuminating the agency, creativity, and critical awareness of religious actors. To respond to religion is to ask what religious behaviors and representations mean to us in our individual worlds, and scholars must confront questions of possibility and becoming that arise from testing their beliefs, imperatives, and practices. Roberts refers to the work of Hent de Vries, Eric Santner, and Stanley Cavell, each of whom exemplifies encounter and response in their writings as they traverse philosophy and religion to expose secular thinking to religious thought and practice. This approach highlights the resources religious discourse can offer to a fundamental reorientation of critical thought. In humanistic criticism after secularism, the lines separating the creative, the pious, and the critical themselves become the subject of question and experimentation.
Download or read book Studying Religion written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely used as a primer, a text and a provocation to critical thinking, 'Studying Religion' aims to develop students' skills. The book clearly explains the methods and theories employed in the study of religion. Essays are offered on a range of topics: from the history and functions of religion to public discourse on religion and the classification of religions. The works of key scholars - from Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Otto to Mircea Eliade, James G. Frazer, and Sigmund Freud - are analysed and explored. 'Studying Religion' represents a shift away from the traditional focus of describing the exotic or curious religious 'Other' to an examination of how religious behaviours and institutions are studied. The book will be invaluable to students of religious studies.
Download or read book A Magic Still Dwells written by Kimberley C. Patton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first thorough assessment of the field of comparative religion in forty years, this groundbreaking volume surmounts the seemingly intractable division between postmodern scholars who reject the comparative endeavor and those who affirm it. The contributors demonstrate that a broader vision of religion, involving different scales of comparison for different purposes, is both justifiable and necessary. A Magic Still Dwells brings together leading historians of religions from a wide range of backgrounds and vantage points, and draws from traditions as diverse as Indo-European mythology, ancient Greek religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Ndembu ritual, and the spectrum of religions practiced in America. The contributors take seriously the postmodern critique, explain its impact on their work, uphold or reject various premises, and in several cases demonstrate new comparative approaches. Together, the essays represent a state-of-the-art assessment of current issues in the comparative study of religion.
